US Launches Cyber War Against the World

“It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that
kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and
disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs”. - British historian and aesthetician Sir Kenneth Clark

“A Two-Wave Experiment found that the way the news media
presents the news can cause political cynicism" - Dutch study called, The Effects of Strategic News on
Political Cynicism, Issue Evaluations, and Policy Support

“[The Dulles brothers] were able to succeed [at regime
change] in Iran and Guatemala because those were democratic societies,
they were open societies. They had free press; there were all kinds of
independent organizations; there were professional groups; there were
labor unions; there were student groups; there were religious
organizations. When you have an open society, it’s very easy for covert
operatives to penetrate that society and corrupt it”.-Author Stephen Kinzer

"A
spirit of instability in government will cause [citizens] to lose
confidence in public institutions. When citizens lose basic faith in
their government, it leads to corrosive cynicism and the acceptance of
conspiracy theories. Movements and individuals once considered fringe
become mainstream, while previously responsible figures decamp to fever
swamps. One result is that the informal and unwritten rules of
political and human interaction, which are at the core of civilization,
are undone. There is such a thing as democratic etiquette; when it is
lost, the common assumptions that allow for compromise and progress
erode. In short, chaotic leadership can inflict real trauma on political
and civic culture". - Senior Fellow at Ethics and Public Policy center
and served in three Republican administrations, Peter Wehner

They have the tools to create chaos in targeted socialites. They
have the tools to set the political mood of any given society. They have
the tools to sow political unrest anywhere around the world. They first destroy
the nation's spirit
through an information war, after which they attempt to subdue or destroy the nation's body,
either through an economic or financial blackmail or, if need be, a war. Using information
and political activists as a tool to weaken targeted governments around the world is essentially
what
civic activism, propaganda and psy-ops is all about. Therefore, it can be said that for Western powers the notion of
“free media” simply means: Information controlled by Western interests.This is not a theory of mine. More and more people around the world are beginning to talkabout this serious problem. Please research the following to put it all in context -

Therefore, keep all this in mind next time you read news articles produced by Armenian news outlets based in the United States or come across news reports put out by Armenia’s Western-financed political opposition. Most of the news reports and political commentaries put out by such sources are specifically designed to convey outrage against the Armenian state and sow hopelessness among Armenians. They are therefore meant to breakdown the spirit and sow the seeds of sociopolitical unrest.Now you know why Western powers have been encouraging Armenian opposition officials, "independent" journalists and political activists to disseminate negative news about Armenia on a persistent basis. Their constant “the sky is falling" rhetoric is how they have wounded the Armenian spirit and why growing numbers of Armenians want out of Armenia.

I reiterate: Much of
the reason behind why Armenians have been demoralized in recent years
and why there is
political instability and a powerful sense of hopelessness in Armenia
today is precisely due to the mass hysteria fomented by the
Western-led forces in the country. Armenia is suffering from a
persistent campaign of doom and gloom and every single growing pain in
the country is getting co-opted and
turned into a sociopolitical fiasco.

US Launches Cyber War Against the World

After
geopolitics, the power of state-sponsored propaganda and psychological
warfare operations (psy-op) is perhaps the least appreciated and least
understood topic in political affairs. Even less understood is the
government's exploitation of cyber technology in recent years. When
people look at their computer screens they do not normally see a
powerful tool for warfare. That, I'm afraid, is not the case when it
comes to governments. With growing numbers of people getting "on-line"
around the world in recent years, cyber technology is providing those
in powers with historic new opportunities. What we have been
experiencing in the Middle East lately is the sophisticated fusion of
armed intervention, propaganda (psy-op) and cyber technology into one
effective/lethal political tool.

With tens of millions of undereducated and underemployed and
increasingly restless youth coming of age throughout the world,
strategic planners of the Western alliance are exploiting this historic
opportunity. Cyber-based psy-op and military might is being used to
attain geopolitical goals - namely the remaking of the Middle East. The
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance in conjunction with client states in
the Arabian peninsula are currently working on the region's loose ends
in preparation for their future attack on Iran. This is a long-term
agenda and it will not simply end with Iran. They have bigger obstacles
on the horizon such as Russia and China that they will have to
negotiate as well. But all in due time.
Keep the following information in mind next time you hear talk about
"Twitter" or "Facebook" in the context of revolutions taking place in
the Middle East. These "online revolutions" are not as "spontaneous"
or as "grassroots" as they are being portrayed - because they are
being managed/coordinated by special units of Western intelligence
services. As much as they would have liked to have kept it a secret,
information is now beginning to leak out about Washington's
involvement in some of the bloody revolutions currently plaguing the
Middle East (there seem to be one or two counter revolts instigated by
Iran as well). When truly confidential information is "leaked", it is
primarily done for political purposes and it is usually done by
opposing intelligence services and sometimes by disgruntled employees.Regardless
of who released such information and why, what's clear here is that
Washington is playing a major role in the unrest the Middle East is
currently suffering. Therefore, as suspected (I didn't need to see to
this information to know that it's occurring), the long tentacles of
the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance has been exploiting wide-spread
public despair and the popularity of modern technology to do its dirty
work overseas. The following are some reports on the topic by Russia's
RT:

When
it comes to the manipulation of people's mindsets and carrying out
politically driven propaganda, Washington has a great number of very
powerful and highly sophisticated tools at its disposal, both
conventional (a large army of activists, mainstream media, government
funded NGOs, school curriculum and Hollywood) and unconventional
(cyberspace technology, psychological warfare operations and internet
activists). According
to released information, the US government is apparently using
Information Technology to spread pro-United States propaganda within
nations where Washington is currently raping and pillaging the
natives. In
other words, they are putting on a "America is your friend" happy
face as they molest vulnerable Third World nations with abundant
natural wealth. And when the governments of nations being
targeted resort to curbing internet usage in their countries as a
countermeasure, they are quickly accused of being dictatorial and/or
tyrannical. Thus, it's a no win situation for those targeted.We
must also take into consideration that what is known about what the
US government does (even against its own citizens in the US) is merely
the tip of the iceberg. If the US government can use the internet to
covertly spread "America is your friend" propaganda throughout the
world, don't you think it can also use the same medium to instigating
violence in targeted nations such as Russia, Libya, Armenia, Iran,
Syria, China, Serbia, Venezuela, Lebanon,[fill-in-the-blank]? Of
course it can, and it does! And there is plenty of evidence at hand.
All one needs to do is open their eyes. I have posted a number of
relevant articles below this commentary.
As a matter of fact, the cyber-based psy-op against Libya and Syria
have been frighteningly well organized and quite public in its
implementation. As if over night, dozens of US-based Libyan and Syrian
blogs and virtual organizations have mushroomed and they are all
calling for regime change and revolution. Although they are naturally
giving the Middle East all the priority currently, there are other
targets as well.

Not a week goes these days by without a nasty report appearing in the
controlled press about Russia. Virtually every single US news article
or report that appears about the Russian Federation is either negative
or down right hostile. Even the western world's blogosphere today is
saturated by Russia-haters. Specially after the 2008 war in Georgia,
Western Russophobia has been very intense and very organized. This is
not merely a result of ignorance or chance. It is all government
sanctioned. The long-term strategic goal of this agenda is to condition
and manage the emotions of the general public. When a major nation that
is viewed as a competitor is vilified and belittled in the minds of
the masses, it becomes much easier for their politicians to carry out
their dirty work.
Closer to home, there is a whole range of US-based blogs and
organizations that primarily concern themselves with disseminating
anti-Armenia propaganda. The following "online revolution", for
instance, was attempted in Armenia during last February when the West
was maintaining hope that Levon Petrosian would be able to stir
trouble again. This particular program was being managed by Onnik
Krikorian, a British-Armenian agent posing as an "independent
journalist" and a "human-rights" activist. [During the 1960s, special
operatives often posed as backpackers and aid workers. These days, they
like to pose as journalists and social activists] A brief look at the
following two websites is all that is needed to fully understand who
Onnik Krikorian is working for and for what purpose:

Washington's
large army of cyberspace activists (human and electronic) are
saturating different Armenian blogs, news websites and chat-rooms
(discussion forums) with Washingtonian inspired political rhetoric and
poisonous commentariesconcerning the Armenian republic. It's
obvious that Armenia has recently become one of the main targets of
Washington's sophisticated psyop campaign. Monitor any one of the major
Armenian news websites and blogs and read the posted commentary at
the bottom of the features news articles. The spirit of many of the
commentaries in question range from the absurd to the surreal.The
following blog entry is related to this topic. When visiting the
sources from which the articles came, please pay attention to some of
the commentaries posted at the bottom of the pages:

But
much to the dismay of the Raffi Hovannisians, Paruyr Hayrikian,
Richard Giragosians and Vartan Oskanians, officials in Washington are
finding Armenians to be a bit more difficult to manipulate and coax
than Third World natives they have been so accustomed to dealing with
all these years.Armenians
may be politically illiterate, but they see right through bullshit.
Having Moscow constantly watching our back hasn't hurt either. In
tandem with Armenia's interior ministry, the Russian FSB is most
probably busying itself placing various countermeasures in Armenia.
Naturally, Russian intelligence has had very deep roots in Armenia. This
may ultimately save Armenia from a bloody revolution.
Washington isn't the only political entity involved in this high-tech
game of manipulation. Israel's intelligence services also carries out
sophisticated operations aimed at conditioning the political
sentiments of non-Jews. During the 2006 war in south Lebanon, the
following curious piece of leaked information was being disseminated
throughout the internet:

Israel's
Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to
counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab
propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track
websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with
hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive
messages. In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of
Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special â€œmegaphoneâ€ software
that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable
them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs
the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that
those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course
of a debate.

Next
time you find yourself on an online discussion forum and the topic of
conversation is not to the Mossad's liking, expect some friendly Jew
to show up and start claiming that Armenians and Jews brothers and
that the real enemy of the world is Islam or Iranians or Hezbollah or
Palestinians, etc. During the 2006, when the world community was
basically cheering the heroic actions of Lebanon's Hezbollah, I
personally observed this happen on several different occasions.

Nevertheless, what's obvious here is that Washington and friends are
pulling the strings of the rebellions and revolutions we are currently
seeing take place all across the Arab world. This, in a sense,
reveals just how deeply compromised that region of the world has
become. With the exception of Libya, Iran, Syria, segments of Lebanon
and formerly Iraq, rest of the region's dictatorships/kingdoms
(particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) are client states of the
Western alliance. Thus,
looking at the playing field as it currently exists, it is quite easy
to see what nations will be violated and what nations will be supported
- regardless of silly little things like democracy and freedom.
The sheeple in this region of the world may be
rebelling/protesting/demonstrating for legitimate reasons, their
shepherds, however, are carrying out the orders of the
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance. In fact, as many of us already know,
wars that are raging in the Middle East and Central Asia
today were planned by Western military planners many years ago. The
following Democracy Now video clip of a 2007 interview by the
soft-spoken war-criminal Wesley Clark is a very troubling revelation:

The
geopolitical agenda of the Western alliance is commencing in full
force throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of Africa.
This 21th century project to remake certain parts of the world was
planned during the 1990s, when the Anglo-American-Zionist global order
was 'the' hyperpower, at a time when Russia and China were no where to
be seen. And the grandiose plan in question was fully commenced in late
2001 - in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks
against the United States by unknown assailants. The following is a
video clip of a speech neoconservative war criminal (and one of the
masterminds of the wars we have raging today) Paul Wolfowitz gave West
Point graduates shortly before the events of September 11, 2001. In
hindsight, the tone of his "get ready to be surprised" speech is very
curious:

What's
clear is that we are truly living in very troubling times. This is one
of the pivotal points in human history. How humanity will come out of
this period is anyone's guess. Never before had the global population
been this large. Never before had food and energy production been this
strained. Never before had so many regions of the world been
simultaneously this explosive. Never before had a single political force held this much global power and this much sway over the global community. Only the rise of Russia and China and the political awakening of humanity can save the world from the next dark age. The
words you will hear and read with the following posts are that of
Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the main masterminds of the Western
alliance. The first link is to a 2010 speech he gave in Montreal at a
Council on Foreign Relations meeting. The text at the bottom of the
video link are excepts from "The global political awakening", an
article by Brzezinski that appeared in the New York Times in 2008.
Please pay close attention to Brzezinski's choice of words:

For
the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically
activated, politically conscious and politically interactive... The
resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest
for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a
world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or
imperial domination... The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the
central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political
awakening... That awakening is socially massive and politically
radicalizing... The nearly universal access to radio, television and
increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions
and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or
religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a
challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global
hierarchy, on top of which America still perches... The youth of the
Third World are particularly restless and resentful. The demographic
revolution they embody is thus a political time-bomb, as well...

Their
potential revolutionary spearhead is likely to emerge from among the
scores of millions of students concentrated in the often intellectually
dubious "tertiary level" educational institutions of developing
countries. Depending on the definition of the tertiary educational
level, there are currently worldwide between 80 and 130 million
"college" students. Typically originating from the socially insecure
lower middle class and inflamed by a sense of social outrage, these
millions of students are revolutionaries-in-waiting, already
semi-mobilized in large congregations, connected by the Internet and
pre-positioned for a replay on a larger scale of what transpired years
earlier in Mexico City or in Tiananmen Square. Their physical energy and
emotional frustration is just waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a
faith, or a hatred...

[The]
major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while the
lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity
to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is
at a historic low. To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to
control one million people than to physically kill one million people;
today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to
control one million people.

Zbigniew BrzezinskiFormer U.S. National Security AdvisorMember of Council on Foreign RelationsCo-Founder of the Trilateral CommissionMember, Board of Trustees, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Well folks, there you have it;
right from the source. But is anybody listening? Looking at the masses
of undereducated, underfed and underemployed, Brzezinski said - "[the sheeple's] physical energy and emotional frustration is just waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a faith, or a hatred".
Isn't this exactly what's going on overseas today? It's also
interesting to note that these people look at their native activists as
coming from "often intellectually dubious tertiary level educational institutions of developing countries".
In other words, the army of Armenian human rights activists and
independent journalists that are enthusiastically serving Satan these
days in the name of Truth, Justice, and the American Way (as well as a
few dollars and round trip tickets to Armenia), are in reality looked at
by their masters as nothing more than cannon-fodder.We Armenians simply must not allow these demons to comfortably settle in Armenia like they have done elsewhere. We must not show Armenia's many Western operatives and activists any tolerance. As a matter of fact,all
those in Armenia that maintain ties with the Western alliance, in any
capacity, regardless of who they may be, should be placed under state
surveillance - or simply exiled. Armenia
does not have the resources, the strength, the expertise or the
experience to effectively counter the machinations of the West.
The only cure against the corrosive/destructive power of the political
West in Armenia is better and closer relations with the East. Some
foolishly think Armenia would be able to ward-off Western designs with
higher standards of living. These people utterly fail to realize that
despite our best efforts, due to Armenia's less-than ideal geographic
location and geopolitical circumstances, attaining higher standards of
living for the population will remain some years away.Libya had the highest standard of living in all of Africa, did that stop its mutilation by the Western alliance?
At the end of the day, Russia and to some degree the Islamic Republic
of Iran and China are Armenia's last hope for survival in what may yet
become the bloodiest century we have had.During
the seconds half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union was an easy
thing to hate and fear. Moscow's threatening posture at the time as well
as the prospects of communism coming to a nation nearby helped conceal
the true face of the political West. Since the Soviet collapse, the
mask has come off. The modern version of Bolshevism, the Globalism that
is being imposed upon us by the Anglo-American Zionist world - is the
single most dangerous thing the global community faces. Being stupid
during the Cold War was one thing... being stupid now, in this
information age, after what we experienced during the past twenty years
is totally inexcusable.

Don't believe the hype! There is a news media blitz against ArmeniaBecause Armenia is an ally of Russia, Armenia has been a major target of Western psy-ops. Keep this in mind next time you read less-than flattering news articles about Armenia produced
by a number of Western-financed news sources both in and out of Armenia. Most of the
news reports and political commentaries put out by such news sources are
specifically designed to convey outrage against the Armenian state and
sow hopelessness among the Armenian population. Such news reports are meant to
breakdown the spirit and sow the seeds of sociopolitical unrest. Now you know why Western powers have been encouraging Armenian
opposition officials, "independent" journalists and political activists to disseminate
negative news about Armenia on a persistent basis. Their political hysteria and their constant “the sky is
falling" rhetoric is how they have wounded the Armenian spirit and why growing numbers of Armenians want out of Armenia.

I
reiterate: Much of
the reason behind why Armenians have been demoralized in recent years
and why there is
political instability and a powerful sense of hopelessness in Armenia
today is precisely due to the mass hysteria fomented by the
Western-led forces in the country. Armenia is suffering from a
persistent campaign of doom and gloom and every single growing pain in
the country is getting co-opted and
turned into a sociopolitical fiasco.Breaking news!!!

Kirk
Kerkorian has decided he is done with Armenia... The Millennium
Challenge fund is to end its lifesaving projects in Armenia... The White
House is cutting aid to Armenia... The protocol is part of a secret
plan to turn Armenia into Turkey's eastern most province... Armenia's
servicemen are massacring one-another... Armenia's women are
being brutally murdered throughout the country... Armenia's uber-corrupt
government is driving all businesses out of the country at gunpoint…
Armenia's news press is being edited by Serj Sargsyan himself… Armenia's
leaders are unelected criminals seeking to sell Armenia to the highest
bidder… Armenia's president is going sell Artsakh to the Azeris...
Armenia is being re-colonized by Russia... Armenia is to be invaded any
day now... Armenia's poor are starving to death in the streets...
Armenia's women are turning to prostitution en-masse... Armenia is
turning into a crime ridden third-world cesspool... Armenia's air, water
and soil are toxic... Armenians gangs are running amok around the
world… Armenia is a petty dictatorship, a banana republic without the
bananas... Armenia is on the very verge of total and utter
destruction... Armenia's population is merely one Armavia flight away
from total and final extinction!!!

Listening
to the Western press and its pathetic lackeys within our communities
discuss Armenia these days, one would think that this is the very end of
the road for our fledgling republic in the Caucasus; Armenia has
finally reached its cul-de-sac. Some
people in very high places would like our people to believe that if a
Western inspired color revolution in Armenia does not succeed in putting
into power a kabal of mercenaries that are willing to serve their
Anglo-American-Zionist masters, the Armenian state will soon cease to
exist. That is fundamentally what they want you and I to
believe. And it is towards this aim that they are carefully preparing
their field of play. Something must be going down behind the scenes in
Washington. I hope that something is not a major regional war. But
looking at the volatility of the political situation in the region today
that may certainly be it. The very terms "Armenia" and "Armenian" are
being turned into something negative; similar to what they did with
Serbia ten years ago. They are trying to cause instability in the
republic. I pray to God that the next stage, which usually is the start
of hostilities, is averted somehow.

Alarmingly,
the anti-Armenia media blitz carried out by various American funded
media outlets and their affiliates in Armenia's so-called "opposition"
is succeeding in convincing a significant portion of our compatriots
that it's all a lost cause. The toxicity of their propaganda
campaign has begun permeating all layers of Armenian society.
Helplessness and hopelessness, despair and desperation is what one
immediately feels when discussing Armenia these days. The divide
between the homeland and the diaspora is growing and divisions within
Armenia itself are deepening. Please read the various articles posted
below this commentary to better acquaint yourselves to the kind of
atmosphere/mood they are attempting to create, as well as their their
long-term political intentions (comments posted below some of the
featured articles are also quite interesting to read). The
primary catalysts of apocalyptic news about Armenia, the vehicles upon
which corrosive propaganda travels within the Armenian community are -
ArmeniaNow, Asbarez, Armenian Weekly, Hraparak, Hetq, Lragir, Aravot, A1 Plus, Radio Liberty and their various
affiliates in and out of Armenia.

Various Western measures to bring the fledgling Armenian state in the
Caucasus to its knees have not bore fruit. Armenia won the war against a
Western-backed Azerbaijan. Armenia has been bravely enduring an almost
twenty year economic blockade by NATO - via Turkey, of course. And much
to their dismay, Armenia has institutionalized its military alliance
with the Russian Federation and it has established very warm relations
with Iran. Equally to their dismay, Armenia's national infrastructure is
slowly but surely developing - independent of the Western alliance. As a
result of its close working alliance with the Russian Federation and
its very healthy relationship with Iran, Armenia today has put itself in
a strategic position to potentially become a major regional
energy/trade hub - independent of the Western alliance. Yerevan's
audacity in not playing ball with the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance is
essentially what's driving the multi-pronged propaganda assault against
the Armenian state today.

Because
they cannot directly attack Armenia (similar to what they did with
Serbia and Iraq) because of Armenia's significant Russian military
presence, they are resorting to other measures. When economic and/or military measures fail to break a nation’s will, they will resort to psychological warfare -the war against the nation's spirit and its will to live.

What most Armenians do not know is that psychological warfare
operations (psy-op) is an actual manner of combat and one that is
employed by virtually all major powers on earth. It’s just that the
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance's strategic psychological warfare
operations are considered to be the world’s most sophisticated and most
lethal. Most Armenians also fail to
realize that Armenia has been a major target of these types of
operations by the West for a very long time; it actually goes back to
the Cold War period when elements within Armenia and the Armenian
diaspora were employed by Western officials to undermine Soviet
Armenia. The intensity of this Washington based psychological operations
have been intensified lately. In my opinion, this is most probably as a
result of the long-term military deal Yerevan struck with Moscow
during last summer and due to Armenia's growing relations with Tehran.
Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, even as I write this, there is a
full-scale psychological warfare blitz taking place against the
Armenian state.

What are their intentions? What is their end
game? Why are they targeting the little, landlocked, blockaded and
impoverished nation surrounded by so many enemies in the Caucasus?

Simply put: as mentioned above, Yerevan refuses to play the game with the Anglo-American-Zionist global order.
The Armenian state has chosen Russia to be its military ally and its
economic lifeline. I don’t need to explain why this is because reasons
for it are self-explanatory. But Russia is not the only problem. Armenia
also refuses to participate in the aggressive campaign against Iran. You
see, had Armenia’s leadership been Washington’s puppets in the
Caucasus, we would not have heard a single bad word about them in the
Western press. Had Armenian officials been in bed with
Washingtonian officials, despite any of its problems, Armenia would be
portrayed as heaven on earth and Armenia’s leaders would have been
described as - protectors of freedom and democracy. But the reality is,
had Armenia's politicians been dancing to the tunes of the Western
alliance, Armenia would eventually cease to exist, yet again.

For
the West, Armenia is just an obstacle getting in the way of their
regional oil/gas exploitation efforts. Armenia is also an obstacle
getting in the way of Western efforts to push Russia out of the
Caucasus. Armenia is also an obstacle getting in the way of Western
efforts to establish a regional platform from which to attack Iran. For
Russia, on the other hand, Armenia is a crucially important strategic
ally that is actually keeping the region's Western, Islamic and Turkic
agendas at bay with its presence. Therefore, what Yerevan and
Moscow have is a tight convergence of long-term strategic interests. As a
result, because Yerevan has gotten into a crucially important military
alliance with the dreaded Russian Federation (a much envied political
entity various Western and Islamic/Turkic powers have tried to undermine
or destroy for centuries), Armenia will continue being targeted by
Washington and its allies.

When
was the last time any of you read or heard anything negative said
about any one of Washington's numerous dictators and tyrants in South
America, Central America, Africa, the Arabian peninsula, South-east Asia or in Central
Asia? When we sometimes do hear some criticism of a corrupt leader that
has close ties to Washington - like when they criticize Afghanistan's
Hamid Kharzai from time-to-time - it simply means that American officials either had a falling out over some political/economic matter
or it's simply a ploy/political theatrics. Concerning Hosni
Mubarak: he was their nasty bastard for thirty years. However, since he
was an octogenarian (in other words, almost dead), since he was severely
hated by his people, since he had gotten far too complacent/lazy in
office, his handlers in Washington reluctantly allowed him to be pushed
out of power. And who took over the controls of government? The military that
Mubarak ran! Eventually they will put into office yet another Western/Zionist lackey and they will call it a democracy!Anyway,
listen to an important Washington insider, who also happens to be a
well known billionaire, a media executive and a political commentator
discuss democracy in the Middle East -

Of
course Washington denied any involvement, saying
that the van in question was "stolen" just prior to the incident. But
how many of you actually saw this incident in Cairo on your television
screens? Just imagine what media executives and government officials in
the United States would have done with this kind of video footage had
the van belonged to Russian or Iranian officials: It would have been made into a movie or a
book by now! It simply amazes me that there still are people on earth
who believe Washingtonian propaganda. The kind of self-serving
propaganda and double talk Washington puts out these days is more
outlandish than any Hollywood film, yet a significant portion of
humanity still accepts it as gospel.

Being stupid during the Cold War was one thing, being stupid in the post-Soviet world is NOT excusable.

As
a result of the recent political unrest in the Middle East and North
Africa, Washington and its many assets in the Armenian community are
smelling blood once again. Taking advantage of Armenia's
lingering economic woes (which is in part due to the global economic
downturn), they would like to use this opportunity to foment a popular
uprising against the Armenian state. And they are using their diverse
assets in Armenia and in the diaspora to push their geopolitical agenda
and to break the Armenian people’s will/spirit.

ArmeniaNow, for instance, has more-or-less been lamenting that Armenia is not descending into a bloody mess. This Western propaganda outlet in Yerevan is run by John Hughes,
a well known CIA asset from California that many of our
self-destructive peasantry adores. With their very incendiary reporting,
ArmeniaNow played a major role in trying to provoke violence against
the state during Levon Ter Petrosian's attempted coup d'etat in early
2008. Since Georgia's defeat in the summer of 2008, however, the staff
at ArmeniaNow had considerably toned-down their anti-state rhetoric.
For the past three years, they had been very careful with their
reporting. Now, with them smelling blood once again, they are gradually/subtly/carefully attempting to reenter the fray.
Simply put: ArmeniaNow's intentions in Armenia are solely the
intentions of Washington and Washington’s intentions in Armenia are
solely to carryout a regime change in Yerevan. Again, it’s all about
Armenia’s alliance with Russia and its good relations with Iran.

We
even now have "social activists" like Onnik Krikorian, a British born
Armenian agent that has close connections to ArmeniaNow and various
other Western funded entities in Armenia, attempting to prepare the
field of confrontation. The following are two web pages caught my
attention -

I’m
afraid their relentless psy-op campaign may be working. We now have a
significant portion of our compatriots both in and out of the homeland
demoralized and hopeless beyond help. For these Armenians, the Armenian
sky is literally falling on their heads. The hopelessness, the anger,
the hate, the helplessness, the despair, the pessimism, the morbidity,
the cynicism, the willingness to abandon the nation, the willingness to
dodge the military draft... The
ubiquitous bad news being displayed is fast becoming a very convenient
excuse for all those who want to spit on their homeland and abandon it
to its fate. As usual, droves of Armenians are leaving or seeking
to leave their homeland. And droves of Armenians in the diaspora are
seeking a bloody revolution in Armenia.

The
reality is that yes, Armenia is hurting today. But Armenia is hurting
no more than most other countries in the world, countries that are even
in much better circumstances than it. Perhaps this is news to Armenians
today, but last I checked, virtually the entire world was reeling from
an economic crisis. Perhaps this is news to Armenians today, but food
prices, commodity prices and energy prices are going up all around the
world. Perhaps this is news to Armenians today, but social/political
turmoil has gripped the entire world. Perhaps this is news to Armenians
today, but oligarchs, monopolist and corrupt officials saturate
virtually all governments of the world (perhaps with the exception of
Scandinavian nations and Germanic ones in Europe). Perhaps this is news
to Armenians today, but the opulence of the past twenty somewhat years
in the western world has all but ended. All of humanity is hurting today!

Underemployment,
unemployment, higher energy costs, higher rates of poverty, riots,
higher rates of crime, mass protests, shrinking middle class, higher food
costs, numerous wars, ecological damage, disease, widespread political
tensions... It's more-or-less the same story everywhere we look these
days. We are seeing the rise of unrest in many places on earth. The
situation around the globe has gotten so bad that I'm actually very
worried about a world war breaking out in the near future. The reality
is that Armenia is not uniquely or exceptionally in a bad situation.
Another reality is that despite all the odds being stacked against our
landlocked and blockaded nation in the Caucasus, Armenia has actually
been able to keep its head above water and has recently begun to slowly
move forward.

So, what’s with all the damn doom and gloom among Armenians?

I
don't see this kind of irrationality, hysteria and/or destructive
behavior elsewhere. I don't see civilized people willing to abandon
their homelands en-masse. We Armenians have become demoralized to such
an extent that we are more than willing to spit on our homeland. Why is
it that many Armenians are more than ready to abandon their nation of
birth as a result of economic hardship? Why do we Armenians turn and run
when faced with a war? Why do we constantly talk negatively about our
country of origin?We
no longer are able to see hope. We are unable to appreciate positive
developments. We can no longer process good news. We are unable to see
the big picture. And the strange part is that in reality good news from
Armenia is not all that rare. The fundamental problem is that good news
from Armenia has no recipients. It's as if we are actually SEEKING bad
news to spread. It's as if we are actually SEEKING poison to spew.So,
seeing all this, seeing how Armenians operate, they realize that all
they need to do is simply give our dysfunctional people some ammunition
and just stand back and watch as our self-destructive compatriots in and
out of the homeland enthusiastically uses it against the Armenian
state.As I mentioned above, Armenia is NOT the ONLY nation on earth with serious hardships. Start seeing the big picture and STOP participating in the spread of poisonous propaganda!Too
many of us claim that the hopelessness and despair currently being felt
in Armenia and in the diaspora is primarily and directly a result of
the nation's gluttonous businessmen and its corrupt officials/oligarchs.
In my opinion, this particularly
popular take on the matter is only partially correct at best; it's a
half truth that is actually keeping us blinded to what is occurring.I ask again: Is Armenia the only nation on earth with corrupt oligarchs?

The
fact is even the nastiest of Armenia's oligarchs today pale in
comparison to ones found in most other nations; including nations of the
Western world. Is Armenia the only nation with a bad economy? The fact
is most nations on earth today have serious economic problems. Is
Armenia the only nation with enemies? The fact is most nations on earth
have enemies.

So, what is our real problem concerning Armenia?

Could our real problem simply be a matter of perception and/or mental
conditioning? Could our people’s lack of spirit, the absence of
objectivity or nationalism in our people simply be a consequence of the
ruthlessly relentless psychological conditioning that has been directed
against the Armenian nation for all these years - in addition to the
unresolved crisis over Nagorno Karabakh, in addition to its nasty
geographic location, in addition to the imposed economic blockade?Could
our problems be, at least in part, as a result of the assault against
Armenian ethnocentrism and nationalism in Western academia? Could the
problem be a result of the decades long propaganda assault the Armenian
state has had to endure?

We need to learn to accept the harsh realities of life on earth. Let's
also realize that Armenia is not a fairytale land of priests, scholars
and warriors (it may have been once, but it definitely has not been one
for the past one thousand years). After
one thousand years of Islamic, Turkic, Persian and Bolshevik rule,
Armenia today is a nation populated by a deeply scarred people. The
damage caused by one thousand years of corrosive and destructive
foreign rule will not be fixed in a few short years and it will
DEFINITELY not be fixed by Washingtonian officials.Let's all be
mature enough to accept the fact that Armenia will have its share of
criminals, monopolists, drunks, murderers, prostitutes, drug addicts,
traitors, homeless, transsexuals... as well as its meat eaters and
animal haters. For a tiny and poor country stuck in the Caucasus and
fully stocked with naturally talented and overly ambitious people,
Armenia will also have more than its fair share of opportunistic or
less-than trustworthy people.

As I have said in the past, Armenia
is like a small pond containing many hungry sharks. The reality is
these sharks are us. Our sharks are an accurate reflect of our societal
character today. Let's recognize and accept our people's
characteristics, both good and bad, and let's try working with it for
the betterment of our homeland. What we are doing instead is we are
allowing our enemies to exploit our people's cultural traits against
Armenia.

As
mentioned earlier, it is well known that Washington spends enormous
sums of money on intelligence programs, politically driven propaganda
campaigns and psychological warfare operations. It is also well known
that Armenia has been one of Washington’s main targets for a long time. I
personally believe that many of Armenia’s sociopolitical problems today
have their roots precisely in this conditioning of the mindsets of our
people. Unbeknownst to us, we are gradually being turned against
our homeland. Even the terms "Armenia" and "Armenians" are now beginning
to have a negative connotation in the Western press - similar to what
they did with Serbians during the 1990s. Make no mistake about it, the
poisonous propaganda in question is indeed having a major impact on our
nation's collective psyche and our national cohesiveness. And the
alarming thing here is that we Armenians are willingly or unwittingly
participating in the spread of this lethal poison against Armenia.

Everywhere
I look all I see is pessimism, negativity, destructive behaviors and
ugliness. It's all doom and gloom. Just look at the type of news many
of us Armenians these days choose to revel in - Hazings in the Armenian
military… Violence women suffer in Armenia… Mafia… Genocide...
Oligarchs… The evil Russians... The eviction of slum dwellers...
Genocide... The protocols... Police brutality... Genocide... The dreaded
Russians... The garbage... Government corruption… Prostitution… The
beggars... Genocide... Smelly toilets in Yerevan… The flies… The nasty
Russians... If the news is nasty (or
perceived as such), Armenians today make sure it gets around via mouth,
telephones, Facebook or emails - and sometimes all four! Although
there are a lot of positive developments coming out of the nation, our
self-destructive peasantry ONLY concerns itself with the bad news. Not a single positive thing. It's all scaremongering and fear-mongering. And it's all very infectious.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm NOT
making excuses for the bad things that occur in Armenia nor am I
attempting to whitewash the accesses of our oligarchs and corrupt
officials. But can we act like @$%#ing adults and place all this in a
proper perspective? Can we get real for once? Can we act like
responsible/intelligent adults and look at Armenia's problems
objectively and rationally? Our ignorant sheeple both in and out of the
homeland seriously needs to better understand politics and history. As
I have said in the past: we Armenians may be brilliant in business,
sports, literature, sciences and the arts - but when it come to
politics, we continue acting like a bunch of self-destructive peasants
armed with clubs and pitchforks ready to burn down our village to save
it from imaginary monsters.You think this obvious national trait
of ours has not been noticed by our antagonists? You think this
glaringly obvious characteristic of our people is not being used against
our homeland by Western intelligence agencies?

Regarding the violence or abuse women in Armenia suffer: being a father of daughters, I would love to see a LOT changed
in Armenia with regards to the way women are treated or looked at.
However, according to what I have personally observed in the country and
according to various statistical data I have personally read, violence
against women in Armenia is not a widespread problem.Yes, there is a lot of Islamic/Asiatic mentalities in Armenia when it comes to women - but no widespread abuse and/or violence.Abuse
rates in Armenia are actually on the level of many developed nations today.
However, with such matters, there should always be more room for
improvement. So, yes, let's talk about this serious problem, let's raise
our voices in protest, let's try to improve the situation - but let's
also not get hysterically and let's not start demanding a bloody
revolution in the country over this issue. If
its makes the reader feel any better about Armenia, allow me to just
say that abuse of women is actually much worst in most other nations on
earth today. Millions of women are abused and forced into prostitution,
homelessness, alcoholism and drug abuse - in the United States alone.Again, let try to put things in a proper perspective and look at Armenia's problems -rationally!

Regarding violence in the Armenian military: any
time you put together thousands of hotblooded young men from poor
families with mediocre education and overflowing "Armenian" hormones -
you will have violence!!!And
one doesn't need to be a genius to realize this. All armies on earth
have these types of problems; some just happen to have more than
others. Periodic violence in the Armenian military, although normal by
international standards, will gradually improve with better education and order
enforcement, which is beginning to happen. And as far as general societal crime
is concerned - Armenia is actually a safe-haven compared to many
developed nations today.It
is well established that there is a direct correlation between poverty
and crime. Although a large percentage of its population lives in utter
poverty, Armenia is among a handful of nations on earth today where
people do not fear walking the streets late at night and children
continue to play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.With time and with
healthy activism, I believe Armenia's various sociological problems
will be taken care of. We simply need a healthy outlook and an objective/rational mindset.I'm
fully convinced that Armenia’s problems today are not simply a result
of its bad economic situation and government corruption. The real
problem in Armenia today is its bad geographical location and the
relentless psychological warfare being directed against it.

This
is all taking a major toll on the Armenian spirit. We are placing more
than enough emphasis on criticizing and attacking our oligarchs and
corrupt officials. I think now is the time we also need to start criticizing and attacking
those who are using our internal problems against our state. It's time
we call out those who are worsening our domestic problems through
propaganda, manipulation, agitation, instigation and provocation.This
is what all self-respecting and responsible Armenians need to do. If
we are able to somehow stop the psychological warfare being directed
against Armenia, we can then and only then be able to better cope with
our domestic problems.

No, the sky is NOT falling in Armenia! Armenia is NOT a dictatorship. Armenia is NOT on the verge of collapse, nor is it hell on earth.

Armenia
is going through GROWING PAINS like all normal nations. And along the
way, Armenia is being targeted by Western intelligence agencies similar
to how Iran and Russia are being targeted by them. Yes, we have serious
problems with our monopolists in Armenia - but our monopolists are our
problem and we don't need monopolists of global proportions like
Washington to help us in this regard. Yes, we have problems with
criminals in Armenia - but our criminals are our problem and we don't
need criminals of global proportions like Washingtonian officials
helping us in this regard. Yes, we have serious problems with rampant
corruption in Armenia, but these are our problems and we don't need
by-far the world's most corrupt political entity helping us in this
regard either.

When
we Armenians pull our massive heads out of our behinds, we will realize
that Armenia's numerous problems are very natural for a fledgling
nation that has just woken up from nearly one thousand years of forced
hibernation. Armenia's problems are very natural for a fledgling nation
that is tiny, landlocked, blockaded, impoverished, resourceless and
surrounded by enemies in one of the most remote and volatile locations
on earth. Consequently, Armenia's growing pains WILL be more severe than those of others.At this point, some of our compatriots will begin comparing Armenia to Georgia and/or Israel...

Without
getting into a detailed response, allow me to just say that even with
all its tens of billions of dollars of politically driven investments
from places like Saudi Arabia, Europe, Britain, United States, Israel
and Turkey, Georgia is more-or-less in the same socioeconomic boat as
Armenia.

Despite its tens of billions
of dollars of investments, despite its Western/Israeli/Turkish backing,
despite its internationally coveted Back Sea beaches and ports, despite
its bountiful country - the average Georgian in Georgia today has a
similar living standard as his or her counterpart in the small,
landlocked, blockaded and desolate Armenia.

The modern or
"progressive" face of Tbilisi is just that - a superficial facade made
possible by billions of dollars of foreign investments. In short:
despite its numerous financial and political advantages today, a
majority of Georgians continue living in poverty and Georgia is
mutilated. Saakashvili's dictatorial government, in true Western
fashion, has simply become the nation's biggest oligarchic entity, but
his time in office is numbered.

And as far as comparing Armenia/Armenians to Israel/Jews: Armenians
would have to be seriously out of their minds to compare a small, poor
and dispersed, near-eastern nation that has
essentially just stepped out of the middle ages, to a relatively major
ethno-religious group of western educated ethnocentric people
that are firmly entrenched in the western world and armed with an
immense collective wealth that has been acquired for centuries. Prior
to the forced establishment of Israel in Palestine, Jews spent
centuries accumulating wealth and infiltrating various western
infrastructures, both financial and political. They are currently
reaping significant benefits as a result. However, the Zionist State of
Israel is also a fabrication, a Western experiment in the Middle East,
and its time will also eventually come to an end. So, please, stop
acting ignorant, do yourselves and our nation a big favor and stop
comparing Armenians to this nation or to that nation and simply start
seeing Armenians for who they are and, more importantly, what they can
potentially be.

Armenia needs its citizens and its children
around the world to be patient and understanding. Self-respecting
Armenians need to be politically aware and constructive when it comes to
sociological and political matters pertaining to Armenia. It is the
duty of all self-respecting Armenians to partake in constructive
criticism and healthy political activism.

Armenians need to realize that Armenia needs a sociological and political EVOLUTION and not a Western funded revolution.

I want Armenians to STOP
participating in the spreading of poison and I want Armenians to
finally wake up to political realities around them. Sadly, a
significant portion of our people in and out of the homeland today are
made up of ignorant chobans and self-serving egomaniacs. Where other
nations stay and fight, our people have a tendency to cut and run.
Where other nations stay put and participate in nation building, our
people will sell anything for a visa. Where other nations rally around
their flag to fight off foreign meddling, our people enthusiastically
does the bidding of its enemies. This is due to our ignorant chobans and
self-serving egomaniacs being manipulated against their homeland by
foreign powers.

I
can't really blame our enemies for doing what they do. Armenia's
enemies will do whatever happens to be in their best interests. What I
don't understand is Armenians helping our enemies carryout their agenda
against Armenia. Therefore, I particularly blame us Armenians for the
plight Armenia is currently in. Again, being stupid during the Cold War was one thing, being stupid in the post-Soviet world is NOT excusable.

Although
I acknowledge that we Armenians are victims of psychological
conditioning, although I acknowledge that our corrupt and incompetent
officials in Armenia are a problem for our republic, I also would like
to point out that our sad plight is also the fault of every one of us
that have participated in spreading negative news concerning Armenia. If you participated, willingly or unwittingly, directly or indirectly,
in the spreading of poisonous propaganda about Armenia - you are a
fundamental part of the problem Armenia has today!In my opinion,
Armenians today shamelessly participate in the organized slander of our
embattled nation simply due to their deep seated egotism, uncontrollable
emotions and/or political ignorance/stupidity.Here
again, we see the emergence of our ignorant chobans and self-serving
egomaniacs in the overall equation. Sadly, our fledgling state is stuck
between its political enemies, its corrupt officials and its
destructive/problematic sons and daughters.

Looking at the seriousness of the global situation we are in currently, as much as I would not want to see it happen, perhaps
the best thing for Armenia to do right now is to shed several hundred
thousand more of its citizens to release some of its pressure. I
say this with a heavy heart because I really don't see a quick end to
the global mess we are in. I don’t see our numerous enemies stopping
their assaults against our state. I don't see our peasantry engaging in
healthy and/or constructive activism and I don't see our nation’s hungry
sharks eating their fill and beginning to give a little back. Having
dealt with all kinds of Armenians for most of my adult life, I have come
to the following realization: Armenians are maximalists in all that
they do, especially when it comes to screwing someone or something.
Therefore, I don't expect our peasantry to snap out of their stupor
until they have totally burned down their dilapidated village. I don't
expect our hungry sharks to stop eating until they burst. And I don't
expect our nation's mercenaries working for foreign governments to stop
their work against Armenia until the nation is destroyed.

If
this situation continues indefinitely, if we Armenians can't finally
get our house into order and our act straight - it's better and perhaps
much safer to simply handover the house keys to Moscow, once again.

Ideological template for all Armenian patriots

We
must not lose sight of the fact that Armenia is a work in progress.
Armenia is a nation that has suffered a thousand years of damage. This
damage - material, cultural and genetic - won't be fixed overnight.
Tiny, poor, landlocked, remote and surrounded by historic enemies
and dubious friends in one of the nastiest of political environments
in the world, our embattled homeland will naturally have many
sociopolitical problems. But it is our duty as its loving children to
be understanding, objective, rational, constructive, positive and patient.The
following therefore needs to be branded within hearts-and-minds of
all Armenian nationalists and used as a ideological template when it
comes to sociological and political matters pertaining to Armenia -

Armenia's natural growing pains are being exploited by imperial powers (and their Armenian servants) to undermine the fledgling republic due to Armenia's strategic partnership with Russia and its good relations with Iran.

Had
Armenia's "corrupt" leadership been comfortably in bed with the
leadership in Washington, London or Brussels, none of our nation's doom
and gloom activists today would have been given the opportunity to
spew their poison against our embattled homeland.Since
some farsighted leaders in Yerevan have courageously made the
decision to remain firmly within Russia's political orbit, Washington
has its lackeys running around Armenian society acting hysterical over
every single sociopolitical matter in Armenia.

Our
"rights activists" and "opozitsia" types need to shed their Western
connections and funding if they want to be taken seriously; they need
to keep their fight strictly in Armenia; they need to provide
rational solutions and alternatives to the problems at hand; instead
of calling for the whole government or the president to step down,
they need to begin targeting select individuals known to be engaging
in crime or corruption; they need to figure out a way to work with
the government or within the government; they need to be clearer in
their demands.

Armenians need to understand
that if the current government is overthrown it wont be Armenian
patriots that will be taking over. Those waiting on the political
sidelines in Yerevan to exploit political unrest in the country are
those who serve directly and indirectly Angle-American-Jewish and
Turkish interests.

Armenians
need to understand that Western financial aid is in fact a form of
bribe and it comes with too many strings attached. Moreover, accepting
money from Western institutions or governments is like accepting money
for a loan-shark.

As bad as it may seem at times, the problems
Armenia has been going through are natural growing pains.
Historically speaking, twenty years is merely a blink of the eye. Due
to Armenia's particular circumstances - bad geographic location, economic blockade by NATO member Turkey and warlike
situation with Azerbaijan - its growing pains may at times be
severe. We must not lose sight of this. We must also not lose sight
of the fact that most nations on earth today (including nation in much
better circumstances than Armenia) are in fact much worst-off than
Armenia. Armenia has in fact made notable progress despite all the
odds against it.

Who
gave Washington the right to judge nations? Who says the political
West is the standard all the rest have to follow? Why do we care what
politically motivated Western organizations have to say about
Armenia's ranking in anything? Was the Western world born this
developed, this progressive or this wealthy, or did it have to travel a
very long, bumpy path to get to where it is today?

The
Western world, including the United States, took hundreds o years
to reach where it is today. In fact, the Western world is where it is
today due to genocide and mass scale human exploitation and wars of plunder.

A little over century ago America's robber barons (e.g. Carnegies,
Rockefellers, Morgans, Speyers, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, etc.) used their
immense fortunes to buy into the American political system, forever blurring the line between politics and business. These
oligarchs used their powerful influences to impact the making of
political legislation. The political system in the United States was
manipulated by America's oligarchs to serve their businesses and to
preserve their immense wealth. Although it has been in a decline in
recent years, the American middle class essentially grew as a result of
feeding on the crumbs that were falling off the lavish banquet
tables of the nation's super wealthy.

The Western world has severe forms of corruption. It can be argued that corruption in the Western world is by-far the most egregious, albeit more nuanced and sophisticated.
The main difference between corruption in the West and corruption in a
place like Armenia is that corruption in the developed West is
reserved for the political/financial elite, whereas in an
underdeveloped place like Armenia it appears all layers of society.
Moreover, Armenia is tiny, therefore any form of wrong doing can
immediately be seen or felt. Through legislation, the practice of
corruption has evolved to become fully institutionalized in the Western
world. Therefore, in the West, corruption is not for the common folk.
Corruption in the United States, for instance, is reserved for the
empire's elite entities (e.g. military industrial complex,
Zionist/Jewish groups, pentagon, oil industry, Wall Street,
pharmaceuticals industry, etc).

Who
gave the political West the right to criticize and attack nations
that are not as developed? What right does the West have to impose
its system upon others? Why do tyrannical nation that are allied to
the West get a free pass while those who are not politically aligned to
it cannot do anything right? What right does the West have to rate,
label or categorize any nation? And how foolish are the rest of us to actually listen to what they say?

Similar
to what imperial powers did in the past with religion the very notion
of democracy and human-rights today have been weaponized by
Washington. As a matter of fact, everything today is becoming
weaponized by Washington. Money is weaponized. Religion and religious
cults are weaponized. Energy is weaponized. Food is weaponized.
Atheism is weaponized. Scientific research is weaponized. Gay rights
is weaponized. Feminism is weaponized.The news is weaponized.
Entertainment is weaponized. Humanitarian aid is weaponized. The
English language has become weaponized. Globalism has become
weaponized. Fighting corruption has become weaponized. Anything and
everything that can in anyway be used against a targeted nation for a
political and/or economic purpose is systematically becoming
weaponized by Washington.

The thing called democracy for an immature nation like Armenia can very well prove fatal.As
the events of early 2008 clearly revealed to us, Armenians are not
yet politically mature enough to actually be given the responsibility
of electing their leadership. We
have seen the destruction "democracy" has visited upon undeveloped
or underdeveloped nations throughout the world. Which may be why some
vulnerable nations on Washington's black list are being prescribed a
very heavy dose of democracy these days. A nation like Armenia, just
coming out of under a thousand years or Asiatic/Islamic/authoritarian
rule simply cannot have the proper national institutions with which
to flirt with a liberal democratic process. For the foreseeable
future, a Russian style - top heavy - democracy or a benevolent
dictator is what Armenia desperately needs.

Similar
to the situations in nations such as Greece and Italy, corruption and
lawlessness in Armenia is firmly rooted in the people's mindset and
the nation's culture. Therefore, toppling the Armenian government will
not solve the problem of corruption in Armenia. Governments are an
accurate reflection of their constituency. When we look at the Armenian
leadership, what we see is an accurate reflection of the population's
character and nature. Besides which, corruption in any society
cannot be eliminated, it can only be managed.

Diasporan
Armenians need to stop treating Armenia as their personal laboratory
experiment or their exotic playground. Diasporan Armenians need to
realize that those among them that have gotten into trouble in the
country are the ones ones that have arrogantly or foolishly bitten more
than they could chew. Due to Armenia small size, its growing pains
(domestic problems that are normal in much of the world) seem
magnified. The appearance of severe problems in Armenia are often times
simply matter of perception, sometimes a matter of exaggeration and sometimes a matter of Western propaganda.

In
the irrational/naive/utopian pursuits of building the Armenia of
their fantasies, a significant portion of Armenians today are actually
damaging the Armenia of our reality. Armenia's many natural growing
pains need to be addressed rationally, responsibly, objectively,
constructively, with patience and, more importantly - free of Western
manipulation! What Armenians need to realize is that Armenia needs political and social evolution and not a Western sponsored revolution.

The
Cold War is long over. It is time to wake-up from our deep sleep and
see that Washington, the political West, the Anglo-American-Zionist
global order has become a source of evil around the world. There are no rational excuses today for collaborating with the political West.
Due to Western military interventions around the world the global community
today stands on the brink of a major global catastrophe. Any Armenian
that maintains any ties with the political West is ultimately a
traitor to the Armenian homeland, regardless of their intentions.
Therefore, such men and women need to be placed under constant
surveillance by Armenian/Russian counter-terrorism units. Moreover,
Yerevan needs to either shutdown or closely monitor any organization
inside Armenia that is being funded by Western countries regardless of
the nature of their activities.Armenians
must finally recognize that the last thing on the minds of Western
officials is nature preservation, human rights, democracy, freedom or
gay rights. Armenians must learn that the political West is
simply interested in pushing Russia out of the region, defeating Iran
and exploiting Central Asian energy. Russia, Iran and energy exploitation is what has brought the Western world into the Caucasus.
Armenians must finally understand that the political West will always
side with Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan due to their strategic
location, size and natural wealth. Armenians must understand that in
the grand political scheme of the current world we all live in, Armenia is nothing but a nuisance for the political West.
Armenians urgently need to stop participating in Washington's
destructive games regardless of how well intentioned they may seem.

ArevordiAugust, 2011 (Articles amended 2018)

***

US spy operation that manipulates social media

The US military
is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social
media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet
conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian
corporation has been awarded a contract with United States
Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the
Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an
"online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman
or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the
world.

The
project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to
control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely
to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false
consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and
smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own
objectives. The discovery that the US military is developing false
online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock
puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies
and non-government organisations to do the same.

The
Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a
convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to
50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities
from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by
sophisticated adversaries". Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks
said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on
foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent
extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He
said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be
unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any
English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly
attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted
include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto. Centcom said it was not
targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and
specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.

Once
developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working
around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online
conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts,
chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest
this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida,
home of US Special Operations Command. Centcom's contract requires for each controller the provision of one "virtual private server" located in the United States
and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the
fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.

It
also calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers'
internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that
must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability". The multiple
persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a
programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first
developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online
presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition
forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m
programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across
Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Centcom
confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly
formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose
whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss
any related contracts. Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid. In
his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to
disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens
for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda."
He added that Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to
develop new techniques and tactics the US could use "to counter the
adversary in the cyber domain".

According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq, OEV was managed by the multinational forces
rather than Centcom. Asked whether any UK military personnel had been
involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no
evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the
development of persona management programmes, saying: "We don't
comment on cyber capability."

It
is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK
law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and
Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of
forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or
another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by
reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or
any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a
website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice"
as a result.

•
This article was amended on 18 March 2011 to remove references to
Facebook and Twitter and add a comment from Centcom, received after
publication, that it is not targeting those sites.

In
order to undertake the massive operation in cyberspace, the US
Central Command (CENTCOM) has purchased software designed to create
and control false online personas from California-based company
Ntrepid, The Huffington Post reported on Thursday. The software
would allow each user to be in command of 10 personas. Each persona is
"replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber
presences that are technically, culturally and geographically
consistent.”

The
users controlling the false personas would be hidden in a variety of
ways, including randomizing the IP addresses they accessed the
software with, traffic mixing or blending web traffic with that outside
of CENTCOM. The US cyber espionage operation will enable false online
personas, also known as sock puppets, to seem like real people when
they monitor online discussion blogs, message boards and more. The
online persona project is thought to be completely under the sway of
Operation Earnest Voice, which watches over CENTCOM's Information
Operations.

According to CENTCOM commander James N. Mattis, the project "seeks to
disrupt recruitment and training of bombers; deny safe havens for our
adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." Meanwhile,
the spyware would not be used in America, or by American owned
companies or major social network services such as Facebook and Twitter,
the CENTCOM said. "We do not target US audiences, and we do not
conduct these activities on sites owned by US companies," CENTCOM
spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said.Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/170623.html

How the US Establishment Lies Through Its Teeth, for War Against Russia

The same people, Republicans and Democrats, who lied through their teeth for an invasion of Iraq in 2003, are doing it again for an invasion of Russia, sometime soon, so as to ‘defend’ ‘democracy’. The US has by now swallowed up virtually all lands surrounding Russia, at least in Europe, the latest being Ukraine, and is placing its missiles now on and near Russia’s borders, which is to Russians like would be to Americans if Russia had swallowed up Canada and were placing its missiles there. But the lying holier-than-thou US Establishment accuses Russia of being ‘aggressive’ when Russia holds war-games on and near its borders in order to prepare for a US-NATO invasion, which actually looks increasingly likely to them every day — and not because of ‘Russian propaganda’, but because of the US Government’s actions.

Hillary Clinton clearly hated Russians and wanted to start a war against Russia by establishing a no-fly zone in Russia’s ally Syria (which Russia defends while the US invades and occupies Syria) so as to shoot down Russia's planes there, and then, when Russia shoots down US planes in retaliation, America would have its pretext for invading Russia itself ‘so as to defend democracy against Russian aggression’ — but instead, Donald Trump became elected, and he has now turned out to be almost as much of a neoconservative as she was. This displays how extreme the grip is that the neocons, the Establishment and its many minions who dominate both of the two Parties and the press, now have.

An example of the Establishment’s holier-than-thou lies, is an article that appeared on February 22nd at the magazine, The National Interest, whose article-title is itself a marvelous deception, “Averting the US-Russia Warpath” (while the subliminal message there is: reasons why we’ll probably have to invade Russia), and whose authors are three ‘defense’ hawks, including James Northey Miller, of Harvard. He had been an Under Secretary of Defense during the Administration of the merely moderately neoconservative President Barack Obama — the President who in 2014 grabbed Ukraine, and who used Al Qaeda in Syria to lead ’the rebels’ there in order to try to grab Syria. (Ukraine had been friendly toward Russia and is now rabid against Russia; and Syria was and is allied with Russia; so, both of these two lands were American grabs, and the neocon Trump continues both.) Anyone who trusts the US Government to represent in international affairs the interests of America’s public, instead of the interests of America's billionaires, has been deceived by the Establishment’s (the billionaires' and their agents') virtually all-pervasive propaganda in America, and therefore needs a lot of re-learning about US history before understanding anything about US foreign policies. There is very good and sound reason why around the world the United States is considered, by far, to be “the biggest threat to peace” — because it is. (The Peter Kuznick book and Oliver Stone documentary Untold History of the United States, are the best cleaner-away of ‘historical’ lies about US history from 1912 to 2012 that I know of — and the seeing or reading of that, will expose to anyone the mockery of historical truth which is represented in articles such as “Averting the US-Russia Warpath.”)

This ordinary, and profoundly deceptive, article starts:

FOR NEARLY twenty years following the end of the Cold War, military confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation seemed implausible. Even during periods of tension, as during the Kosovo crisis in the late 1990s, few believed that disagreement between Washington and Moscow could lead to a serious crisis, no less war. Before the first decade of the new century had passed, however, Russian officials were accusing the United States of working to isolate Russia. Such apprehensions have mounted steadily in Russia in the years since. At the same time, Russian behavior, including interventions in Ukraine and Syria, military posturing and harassment in Europe, and interference in Western elections, has led many in the United States to conclude that, while a US-Russian conflict is by no means inevitable, the risk of such a confrontation is growing.

The owners of U.S. newsmedia know that in order to serve their fellow U.S. aristocrats who want to kick out Russia’s current leader, Vladimir Putin, so as to enable them to buy Russia’s natural resources (and highly educated work-forces) cheap via “privatizations,” their PR campaign for their fellow aristocrats (their major advertisers) must be led by ‘respectable’ newsmedia, such as Foreign Policy magazine, and not by blatantly right-wing, obviously trashy, ones, such as Fox News. Overtly conservative, nationalistic, ‘news’ media wouldn’t be able to sell to anyone who isn’t already on-board with privatizations of government assets as being a fundamental “free market” principle (i.e, equating fascism — the actual originator of privatizations — with constituting ‘capitalism,’ confusing the two systems as being one-and-the-same). So: not only the fascist media are anti-Putin, but media that pretend not to be are also.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko requests the supreme court of Ukraine to declare that his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by an illegal operation; in other words, that the post-Yanukovych government, including Poroshenko’s own Presidency, came into power from a coup, not from something democratic, not from any authentic constitutional process at all. In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English): “I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as [being] unconstitutional.”

It’s also interesting that when Stratfor’s founder admitted that it was “the most blatant coup in history,” he was saying this to a Russian publication, which published it only in Russian, whereas when his employee recently referred to it, in a video for an American audience, she said (at 4:43 on the video) “the United States helped support the revolution [though it was no revolution, just a coup] that took place in Ukraine this past year.” Stratfor doesn’t want to go overboard to the extent of losing its big-bucks clients, some of which are the people that Obama’s foreign policies represent, but even this employee was so bold as to admit that the United States and not Russia is the aggressor between the two — something the U.S. media won’t allow to be said.

(She expressed puzzlement there at why the U.S. public have come to believe the demonization of Putin, but she’s not so dumb as not to know the answer to that, and she later even said it on the video, at 4:43: “The way that the American media has put it out there is that Russia is being the aggressor.” The video itself was even posted to youtube as, “Conversation: The U.S. Media’s Misleading Portrayal of Russia.” But the video portrayed the newsmedia as merely reflecting American public opinion, instead of as shaping it and being paid by their sponsors to shape it their way, which everyone at Stratfor knows is the reality. The deception is all paid-for. America’s aristocrats are running both the U.S. Government, and the way it and the world-at-large are being portrayed to the public. They control the public, both coming and going.)

America’s aggression against Russia first became overt when the U.S. aristocracy’s President, Bill Clinton (who killed FDR’s Glass Steagall Act and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society AFDC program, and so was one of the best fake ‘Democrats’ until Obama came along and turned Heritage Foundation ideas into U.S. national policies), rejected Russia’s request to join NATO, and he instead invited into NATO three former members of the Warsaw Pact: Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Clinton used the cooked-up excuse against Russia that Russia was then trying to retain Chechnya, though that’s a part of Russia which serves as an essential buffer against possible invasion by Islamic tribes to the south, from Georgia, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan; and so Chechnya’s breakaway movement actually did constitute a national security threat to the rest of Russia. Chechnya was none of the United States’s business, but Clinton needed an excuse, and it served that function for him. The Toledo Blade’s Mike Sigov even headlined on 7 November 1999, “Clinton’s Appeal to Halt fighting in Chechnya Falls on Deaf Ears,” and he wrote: “‘Why does the United States keep humiliating us?’ they often ask. My friends in Russia,… periodically ask me this question. It happened when the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies denied Russia’s request to join NATO and instead admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.” The U.S. aristocracy had wanted, actually, to conquer Russia; they didn’t want merely for the Cold War to end — this was now clear. They want to keep it going until Russia itself is conquered. Obama is doing the same thing at the end of his Presidency that Clinton had done at the end of his, but maybe even worse, because Obama has placed Ukraine into control by rabidly anti-Russian nazis, who are also now teaching the children.

Despite the general blockade against truth, a few American newsmedia have reported, throughout this summer, that Ukraine’s far-right leaders (such as Dmitriy Yarosh) are threatening another “Maidan,” to overthrow the present President of Ukraine, but they don’t report that those same leaders (including Yarosh himself) were instrumental in Barack Obama’s coup in February 2014: the CIA had arranged payments for Yarosh and his people, and, without this U.S. organization and financial backing (including even the establishment of a major TV station to propagandize for overthrowing Yanukovych and for mass-murdering the people who had voted for him), there would have been no coup. None of this information appears in U.S. newsmedia. The American public are widely ignorant of the reality about Ukraine. There are plenty of reports that stenographically transcribe and transmit to the American public the official ‘facts’ about Ukraine, but nothing that exposes the reality, which would be to expose the U.S. aristocracy itself (and this extends all the way from George Soros on the left, to the Koch brothers on the right: virtually the entire aristocracy are committed to defeating the public, not only at home, but abroad).

Therefore, Poroshenko is, in effect, telling Yarosh and his supporters: If you do this again, this time to me, then there will already be a decision from our highest court saying that what you did last time was illegal. And, Poroshenko had already acknowledged, just as the coup was ending, when the EU’s investigator asked him how the overthrow had occurred: We did it, the snipers who shot both the demonstrators and the police were ours; it was a set-up job so as to appear that the violence had been initiated or perpetrated by Yanukovych’s forces, which were actually performing a defensive function, not offensive at all. So: he was already privately on record as having acknowledged this. But that, too, was not published in the American press, even though the evidence for it was first posted online on 5 March 2014, just a week after the coup. Basically, it has all been kept secret from the American people, just as the coup itself has been, and just as the ethnic cleansing to get rid of Yanukovych’s voters has been.

Bruce Stokes headlines in Foreign Policy on 6 August 2015, “NATO’s Rot from Within,” and concludes his analysis of polling in the 9 major NATO countries by noting a lack of public support for NATO in all countries except “the Americans (56 percent) and the Canadians (53 percent) stand ready to go to the defense of a NATO partner against Russia.” His implicit viewpoint is that all NATO countries need to tool-up for a war against Russia; Russia is surrounding NATO, NATO isn’t surrounding Russia.

The mainstream The Daily Beast headlines on 14 August 2015, “Pentagon Fears It’s Not Ready for a War With Putin,” and Nancy A. Youssef opens: “The U.S. military has run the numbers on a sustained fight with Moscow, and they do not look good for the American side. A series of classified exercises over the summer has raised concerns inside the Defense Department that its forces are not prepared for a sustained military campaign against Russia, two defense officials told The Daily Beast.” Again, the underlying assumption is that Russia is the biggest national security threat to the United States, and so there need to be increases in U.S. ‘defense’ spending, to counter Russia’s ‘aggression.’

U.S. News headlined on 23 June 2015, “Top GOP Lawmaker: US Must Consider Building New Nukes,” and Paul D. Shinkman opened: “America needs to replace a rotting arsenal of nuclear weapons and counteract an increasingly boisterous Russia, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. For these reasons, it must consider the long-taboo prospect of building new nukes.”

The U.S. already spent 55.2% of its discretionary federal spending on its military. More money than that would transform the national economy into national impoverishment, because one can’t eat, nor live in, bombs and tanks, nor in any of the other machinery of destruction. Why even watch ‘the news’ on television, or read about it in magazines or newspapers?

But there are a few honest news reports even in the U.S. major newsmedia: On 24 February 2014, just as the U.S. coup in Ukraine was ending, NBC News bannered, “U.S. Military Spending Dwarfs Rest of World,” and they showed that “The U.S. spent more on defense in 2012 than the countries with the next 10 highest budgets combined.” It was about 8 times what Russia had spent, and this amount didn’t even include the additional spending by other NATO countries, all of which have mutual-defense treaties with the U.S. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the Warsaw Pact, which was to Russia what NATO was to the U.S., simply terminated; Russia has since been all alone; and it should have been brought into NATO if NATO weren’t to disband as the Warsaw Pact had done. But the U.S. didn’t do likewise; instead, it rejected Russia. Instead, to the exact contrary, the U.S. invited and brought into NATO seven of the eight former Warsaw Pact countries. That’s aggression. But the U.S. calls “aggression” anything that Russia does to protect itself. Only suckers would believe that, but there’s a sucker born every minute — no, every second! (How could the aristocracy even survive, otherwise?)

In February, President Obama issued his “National Security Strategy 2015” and it used the word “aggression” 18 times, of which 17 referred to Russia as the alleged “aggressor.” If this is merely a mental illness that Obama has, then why are the U.S. ‘news’ media in lockstep behind it? But this strategy isn’t directed only against Russia, it’s directed also against the rest of Europe, even against other NATO countries.

A 2013 Gallup poll of 65 countries that was co-sponsored by the U.S. Government and thus never fully published, reportedly found that among people worldwide, “The US was the overwhelming choice (24% of respondents) for the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today. This was followed by Pakistan (8%), China (6%), North Korea, Israel and Iran (5%).” (Russia wasn’t even there, in the top 5; and nothing below the top 5 was mentioned.) And Obama hadn’t yet perpetrated his coup and ethnic cleansing in Ukraine.

But there was no report of any such poll made afterwards, none at all. Perhaps the U.S. Government didn’t want another, because they now knew that they and their press would need to do a lot more work in order to get Russia to be #1 on that list. Maybe this is what they’ve been working on. However, it’s already clear that the Nobel Committee should abolish their ‘Peace Prize,’ after their having given it to Kissinger, and then to Obama. Maybe they should replace it with a Hypocrisy Prize. Obama would certainly qualify for that. Maybe they could get him to trade in his old prize for that new one, so as to reduce their embarrassment (if they’re not just psychopaths, anyway, like Kissinger and Obama).

Moscow Details Subversive NGO Activities in Russia and Around the World

It’s no secret that the CIA and some wealthy business magnates have been funding and using Non Governmental Organizations to alter the political landscapes inside nations all around the world, whether through meddling in elections or through plotting coups. A detailed report has come out the Russian Parliament about how these NGOs attempted to meddle in recent elections in Russia.

A special commission report on foreign meddling in the 2018 presidential election has been unveiled in Russia’s Upper House. The document highlighted the main methods of the elaborate campaign, spearheaded by the US. The report, presented on Wednesday in Russia’s Upper House (the Senate), was prepared by the Commission for State Sovereignty Protection in cooperation with leading experts and analysts. The publicly available document was presented by the head of the commission, Senator Andrey Klimov. The document pinned the blame for the meddling in Russia’s election directly on Washington, linking the ongoing surge in hostile activities with the domestic political struggle in the US. Attempts to interfere in internal Russian affairs, however, are not new, as they have been going on since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US has been the “main violator of international law” since the founding of the United Nations, and has “interfered more than 120 times in the affairs of 60 countries on all continents.” Washington’s closest allies – the UK, Germany, France, NATO, and European countries – are also to blame, since they either participate directly or support US activities, according to the document. “We tried to show… the areas in which the subversive work took place. We’ve named 10 such areas. We have concrete examples for all of them based on absolutely reliable facts. It’s not someone’s guess, it’s not ‘highly likely,’ it’s something we can prove anywhere, it is backed up by testimonies, documents and it is, by great margin, not disputed by the other side [the US],” Klimov said at a press conference, which followed the hearings in the Upper House. The main purpose of the commission’s report, according to Klimov, is to show the public – both Russian, and international – the scale and systematic nature of the efforts to undermine Russia’s “electoral sovereignty.” The ultimate goal of these activities is to force changes of Russia’s political course, destroy its territorial and economic integrity, he said. Direct election meddling & stirring dissent The West has been trying to de-legitimize each and every election in Russia, routinely dismissing them as “undemocratic.” Ahead of the 2018 presidential election, both the US and EU condemned the barring of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny from the election. Ignoring his criminal conviction that bars Navalny from running for president, a US State Department representative called it a move to “suppress independent voices.” The EU foreign office went even further and stated that barring the politician from the election due to “an alleged past conviction” casted “serious doubt on political pluralism in Russia and the prospect of democratic elections.” Such calls for “democracy” completely disregard Russian law and constitute a blatant attempt at election interference. While one may view Navalny’s conviction as they please, it is certainly not an “alleged” but a very real one, Klimov noted. The election meddling also included wide-scale cyberattacks on government electronic resources, primarily the Central Election Commission. All in all, roughly one-third of such attacks are conducted from US territory, according to the report. More discreet methods include stirring dissent by intensifying the activities of foreign-based Russian-language media outlets and “independent” bloggers. The use of modern technology and communication methods apparently yielded some results, since the latest protests, while much smaller than those of 2011-13, increasingly attracted younger and even underage activists into the streets. Generous NGO funding NGOs operating in Russia have enjoyed a steady flow of funding from abroad, which spiked following the failure to discredit the 2012 presidential election. In 2015, for instance, politically active NGOs received 80 billion rubles (around $1.3 billion) from the US alone, the report says. Although Russia limited the activities of foreign NGOs within the country, requiring them to openly register as ‘foreign agents,’ the flow of funds did not stop. Various ‘grey’ schemes came into use, such as providing large sums in cash or transferring funds to private individuals. In the meantime, Russia-based subsidiaries of foreign NGOs flourished – their funding in 2017 almost doubled compared to 2016. The total amount of NGO funding greatly surpasses the upper limit for a presidential candidate’s campaign in Russia. The scale is comparable to the entire budget for holding elections in the entire country, according to the report. Apart from directly financing “civil activists” in Russia, the US and its allies spent money on more covert activities. Ahead of the election, several unsanctioned socio-political surveys were conducted in Russia, which were sponsored by foreign government structures – including the Pentagon – the report stated. Targeting top Russian leadership, and Putin personally A large part of the foreign efforts to interfere in domestic affairs targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin directly. This was observed as early as 2004, but spiked ahead of the 2012 election, according to the report. Then-US Vice President Joe Biden visited Russia and met with opposition figures, and told Putin that he should not run for a new term, since “Russia was tired” of him, the report says. A similar pattern was seen in the following years, with Putin being portrayed as the only obstacle to the growth and prosperity of the Russian economy, and the man who “deprives the people of the democratic achievements of the 1980-90s.” Apart from smear campaigns, the report said some media also tried to demonize the Russian president in the eyes of the public by exaggerating certain problems to provoke Putin into making “unacceptable mistakes.” Proposed countermeasures The foreign activities outlined, however, failed to yield any tangible effect on the election, proving not their ineffectiveness, but the strength and stability of Russia’s socio-political system, the report concludes. The commission prepared a set of recommendations on countermeasures against future foreign meddling, primarily by tightening up the laws. The proposed measures include prohibiting foreign-printed election campaign handouts, banning the participation of non-Russian citizens in the campaigns in any form, and barring dual-citizenship individuals from becoming trustees of candidates. Other recommended measures include introducing a “special relationship” format with countries that impose sanctions or meddle in Russian affairs. The recommended measures are not limited to restrictions. The report called for other countries and international organizations to become united in jointly opposing US meddling practices. On the home front, special attention will be given to education work, aimed primarily at young people, who are deliberately targeted with foreign propaganda, Senator Lyudmila Bokova told the press conference. The classified version of the report, according to Klimov, contains additional recommendations for countering foreign meddling.

Russia isn’t the only country to recognize the ways in which Western funded NGOs meddle in the affairs of other sovereign nations. Hungary has recently begun taking up legislation to crack down on NGOs funded by George Soros and those which relocate migrants into and within Hungary, potentially altering its demographic makeup, religious traditions, social homogeneity, and political environment.

It's no secret that the Armenian media space contains pro-Western,
anti-Russian mass media. There are two ways to spread anti-Russian
information, and the aforementioned media are divided into two
categories. The first category includes the mass media which openly,
strictly and even thoughtlessly criticize all things connected with
Russia. That is why they are not taken seriously even in Armenia, and
their work is like a proverb – the dog’s barking is for the wind to
carry. The second category of the mass media treats its mission more
seriously and is very dangerous. In such media projects, criticism of
Russia is added to criticism of the native government, criminal stories
and the gutter press. If we exclude the gutter press aspect, the
Armenian radio “Freedom” belongs to the second category.

The
Armenian media – Azatutyun – is financed directly, but unofficially, by
the American embassy in Armenia. And the consequences are clear. The
edition works solidly, steps are highly coordinated, and information is
well-thought through. Almost all the correspondents of “Freedom” go to
various conferences on one and the same day and ask one and the same
question. Usually the question touches on Russia’s activities or
reaction to a certain problem which often has nothing in common with
Armenia. It means the edition fulfills a clear plan which hasn’t been
developed by it. “Freedom” floods the Armenian media space with false
information to promote an atmosphere of mistrust of Russia and all its
projects in the region.

After Serge Sargsyan’s statement on
intention to join the Eurasian projects of Moscow, the activity of the
aforementioned media had improved. Most of the anti-Russian articles and
reports are absurd. For example, the authors state that a possible
Armenian-Azerbaijani military conflict will be beneficial for Russia.
Information on Moscow’s plans to “give away Karabakh” can be seen in
publications of the mass media in the last 20 years. In January 2014
there was information that a group came from Russia and jabbed residents
of Yerevan with HIV-contaminated syringes. “We don’t comment on
rubbish,” the police of Armenia told Vestnik Kavkaza.

Now the
radio is very concerned about the situation surrounding the status of
the Armenian language and violations of the country's Language Law.
Among such violations, according to Freedom radio, is the fact that a
number of Russian-language international conferences are being held in
Armenia. According to the law, all public events should be held with
simultaneous translation into Armenian. The radio station's official
website is now full of anti-Russian comments concerning this topic
provided by various experts. The same is happening on air.

The
radio has also paid special attention to the Rossiya Segodnya's chief
executive Dmitry Kiselyov's remarks made in the Armenian parliament.
Kiselyov and Armenian lawmakers who were taking part in the event, are
still being stigmatized and accused of all possible and impossible
transgressions. This also promotes an atmosphere of distrust and fear.

The
last event, which caused an immediate reaction in the pro-Western
media, was the Armenian president's visit to Georgia. It's quite clear
that the massive Russian Railways' project launched in the region is
unfavorable to the United States. That is why such media could not hide
their delight when the president failed to reach an agreement with the
Georgian authorities. According to such authors, there is now no chance
that the railway connection between Georgia and Abkhazia can be resumed
since Georgia agreed to join the European customs space. It seems like
no comment is necessary.

Hackers trace ISIS Twitter accounts back to internet addresses linked to Britain's Department of Work and Pensions

Hackers have claimed that a number of Islamic State supporters'
social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to
the Department of Work and Pensions.
A
group of four young computer experts who call themselves VandaSec have
unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting
accounts can be traced back to the DWP's London offices. Every computer
and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a
type of identification number. The
hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses
used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts,
which were then used to carry out online recruitment and propaganda
campaigns. At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in
Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they
appeared to link back to the DWP."Don't you think that's strange?" one of the hackers asked Mirror
Online. "We traced these accounts back to London, the home of the
British intelligence services."VandaSec's
work has sparked wild rumours suggesting someone inside the DWP is
running ISIS-supporting accounts, or they were created by intelligence
services as a honeypot to trap wannabe jihadis. However, when
Mirror Online traced the IP addresses obtained by VandaSec, we found
they actually pointed to a series of unpublicised transactions between
Britain and Saudi Arabia.We
learned that the British government sold on a large number of IP
addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms. After the sale completed in
October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their
message of hate. Jamie
Turner, an expert from a firm called PCA Predict, discovered a record
of the sale of IP addresses, and found a large number were transferred
to Saudi Arabia in October of this year.He
told us it was likely the IP addresses could still be traced back
to the DWP because records of the addresses had not yet been fully
updated. The Cabinet Office has now admitted to selling the IP
addresses on to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile
Telecommunications Company earlier this year as part of a wider drive to
get rid of a large number of the DWP's IP addresses. It said the
British government can have no control over how these addresses are used
after the sale.A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "The government owns millions of
unused IP addresses which we are selling to get a good return for
hardworking taxpayers. "We have sold a number of these addresses
to telecoms companies both in the UK and internationally to allow their
customers to connect to the internet. "We think carefully about
which companies we sell addresses to, but how their customers use this
internet connection is beyond our control." The government did
not reveal how much money was made from selling the IP addresses to the
pair of Saudi firms, because it regards this information as commercially
sensitive.

In an interview with Russia Today
(RT), Julian Assange called Facebook the "most appalling spying
machine that has ever been invented." He told RT's Laura Emmett,

Here
we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their
relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their
communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the
United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence.

It's not new ground for the Wikileaks founder. In March, Assange told Cambridge University students
that the Internet is "the greatest spying machine the world has ever
seen." During the Russia Today interview, Assange explained that
Facebook, Google and Yahoo all provide automated interfaces for the
U.S. intelligence (starts around 2:00 in the video below). "When they
add their friends to Facebook," Assange said, "they are doing free work
for United States intelligence agencies." Unlike The Onion's
prescient fake news piece
that poked fun at Facebook's success as a CIA program earlier this
year, Assange says that these Web sites aren't being run by the
government. Instead, the intelligence community is able to "bring to
bear legal and political pressure to them."

A Group of Expatriate Executives and Engineers Furtively Restore Telecommunications for the Libyan Opposition

A
team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels
hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi's cellphone network and re-establish their
own communications. The new network, first plotted on an airplane
napkin and assembled with the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving
more than two million Libyans their first connections to each other
and the outside world after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and
Internet service about a month ago. That March cutoff had rebels
waving flags to communicate on the battlefield. The new cellphone
network, opened on April 2, has become the opposition's main tool for
communicating from the front lines in the east and up the chain of
command to rebel brass hundreds of miles away.

While
cellphones haven't given rebel fighters the military strength to
decisively drive Col. Gadhafi from power, the network has enabled rebel
leaders to more easily make the calls needed to rally international
backing, source weapons and strategize with their envoys abroad. To make
that possible, engineeers hived off part of the Libyana cellphone
network—owned and operated by the Tripoli-based Libyan General
Telecommunications Authority, which is run by Col. Gadhafi's eldest
son—and rewired it to run independently of the regime's control.
Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, asked about the rebel cellphone
network, said he hadn't heard of it.

Ousama
Abushagur, a 31-year-old Libyan telecom executive raised in
Huntsville, Ala., masterminded the operation from his home in Abu Dhabi.
Mr. Abushagur and two childhood friends working as corporate managers
in Dubai and Doha started fund-raising on Feb. 17 to support the
political protests that were emerging in Libya. By Feb. 23, when
fighting had erupted, his team delivered the first of multiple
humanitarian aid convoys to eastern Libya. But while in Libya, they
found their cellphones and Thuraya satellite phones jammed or out of
commission, making planning and logistics challenging. Security was
also an issue. Col. Gadhafi had built his telecommunications
infrastructure to fan out from Tripoli—routing all calls through the
capital and giving him and his intelligence agents full control over
phones and Internet.

On
March 6, during a flight back to the United Arab Emirates after
organizing a naval convoy to the embattled city of Misrata, Mr.
Abushagur says he drew up a diagram on the back of a napkin for a plan
to infiltrate Libyana, pirate the signal and carve out a network free
of Tripoli's control. What followed was a race against time to solve
the technical, engineering and legal challenges before the nascent
rebel-led governing authority was crushed under the weight of Col.
Gadhafi's better-equipped forces. After a week of victories in which
the rebels swept westward from Benghazi toward Col. Gadhafi's hometown
of Sirte, the rebel advance stalled and reversed on March 17, when the
United Nations approved a no-fly zone and government forces kicked
off a fierce counterattack.

In
a sign of deepening ties between Arab governments and the
Benghazi-based administration, the U.A.E. and Qatar provided diplomatic
support and helped buy the several million dollars of
telecommunications equipment needed in Benghazi, according to members
of the Libyan transitional authority and people familiar with the
situation. Meanwhile, rebel military commanders were using flags to
signal with their troops, a throw-back that proved disastrous to their
attempts at holding their front lines. "We went to fight with flags:
Yellow meant retreat, green meant advance," said Gen. Ahmed
al-Ghatrani, a rebel commander in Benghazi. "Gadhafi forced us back to
the stone age."

Renewed
signal jamming also meant that rebel leaders and residents in
Benghazi had little warning of the government forces' offensive across
east Libya and the March 19 attempted invasion of Benghazi, which
sparked panicked civilian evacuations of the city. Mr. Abushagur
watched the government advances with alarm. His secret cellphone
operation had also run into steep problems. The Chinese company Huawei
Technologies Ltd., one of the original contractors for Libyana's
cellular network backbone, refused to sell equipment for the rebel
project, causing Mr. Abushagur and his engineer buddies to scramble to
find a hybrid technical solution to match other companies' hardware
with the existing Libyan network. Huawei declined to comment on its
customers or work in Libya. The Libyan expats in the project asked that
their corporate affiliations be kept confidential so that their
political activities don't interfere with their work responsibilities.

Without
Huawei, the backing from the Persian Gulf nations became
essential—otherwise it is unlikely that international telecom vendors
would have sold the sophisticated machinery to an unrecognized rebel
government or individual businessmen, according to people familiar with
the situation. "The Emirates government and [its telecommunications
company] Etisalat helped us by providing the equipment we needed to
operate Libyana at full capacity," said Faisal al-Safi, a Benghazi
official who oversees transportation and communications issues. U.A.E.
and Qatari officials didn't respond to requests for comment. Emirates
Telecommunications Corp., known as Etisalat, declined to comment.

By
March 21, most of the main pieces of equipment had arrived in the
U.A.E. and Mr. Abushagur was ready to ship them to Benghazi with three
Libyan telecom engineers, four Western engineers and a team of
bodyguards. But Col. Gadhafi's forces were still threatening to overrun
the rebel capital and trying to bomb its airport. Mr. Abushagur
diverted the team and their equipment to an Egyptian air base on the
Libyan border. Customs bureaucracy cost them a week, though Egypt's
eventual approval was another show of Arab support for rebels. Egypt's
governing military council couldn't be reached for comment. Once in
Libya, the team paired with Libyana engineers and executives based in
Benghazi. Together, they fused the new equipment into the existing
cellphone network, creating an independent data and routing system free
from Tripoli's command.

The
team also captured the Tripoli-based database of phone numbers,
giving them information necessary to patch existing Libyana customers
and phone numbers into their new system—which they dubbed "Free
Libyana." The last piece of the puzzle was securing a satellite feed
through which the Free Libyana calls could be routed—a solution
provided by Etisalat, according to Benghazi officials.

On
April 2, Mr. Abushagur placed a test call on the system to his wife
back in Abu Dhabi. "She's the one who told me to go for it in the first
place," he said. International calling from Libya is still limited to
the few individuals and officials in eastern Libya who most need it.
Incoming calls have to be paid for by prepaid calling cards, except for
Jordan, Egypt and Qatar. Domestic calling works throughout eastern
Libya up until the Ajdabiya, the last rebel-held town in the east. An
added bonus of the new network: It is free for domestic calls, at least
until Free Libyana gets a billing system up and running.

As
demonstrations rage on Arab streets, a different battle is happening
on Twitter. In Morocco, Syria, Bahrain and Iran, pro-revolution users
of the site have found themselves locked in a battle of the hashtags
as Twitter accounts with a pro-government message are quickly created
to counter the prevailing narrative. Deemed a revolutionary tool in
many of the region's uprisings, Twitter has been used to great acclaim
for disseminating news and images, often from the ground. In Egypt,
where Twitter users number in the tens of thousands, tweets using the
hashtag #Jan25
from Tahrir Square helped paint a picture through weeks of
demonstrations. Elsewhere across the region and beyond, observers and
even journalists turn to Twitter to get a handle on what's happening in the streets.

Though often a tool for good, Twitter can be used by anyone for virtually any purpose. Journalist Nick Kristof incurred the wrath of the Twitter masses after covering stories of protesters in Bahrain being attacked by police forces. During Morocco's 20 February protests,
pro-monarchy tweets targeted anyone using the #Feb20 hashtag. And
back in 2009, reports abounded of Twitter being used to throw off
supporters of Iran's green movement.

The latest news comes from Syria, where Twitter use remains low despite – until recently
– a ban on certain other social networks, including Facebook.
Nevertheless, Syria's dedicated Twitter users have taken to the
microblogging site to post news, images and photos of the demonstrations
taking place across the country. Using the hashtags #Syria, #Daraa and #Mar15,
they've managed to bring attention to a movement – and ensuing
crackdowns from security forces – that hasn't seen much global media
attention.

Twitter
users have to contend with competing interests as protests continue
elsewhere in the region, but also with a cabal of pro-regime accounts,
set up recently for the sole purpose of flooding the #Syria hashtag
and overwhelming the pro-revolution narrative. As the Syrian blogger Anas Qtiesh writes, "These accounts were believed to be manned by Syrian mokhabarat
(intelligence) agents with poor command of both written Arabic and
English, and an endless arsenal of bite and insults." These accounts,
run by individuals, harassed users but had little effect on the hashtag
search. Another set of accounts, however, managed to inundate the
#Syria tag. Using a Bahraini company, EGHNA,
bots are sending messages – sometimes several a minute – using various
Syria-related search terms. Under the heading "Success stories", the EGNHA website says:

"LovelySyria
is using EGHNA Media Server to promote interesting photography about
Syria using their Twitter accounts. EGHNA Media Server helped
LovelySyria get attention to the beauty of Syria, and build a community
of people who love the country and admire its beauty. Some of their
network members started translating photo descriptions and
rebroadcasting them to give the Syrian beauty more exposure. LovelySyria
is using their own installation of EGHNA Ad Center to generate the
Twitter messages, their current schedule is two messages every five
minutes."

Other accounts, such as @SyriaBeauty, @DNNUpdates and @SyLeague,
perform similar functions. Their messages are sometimes political,
sometimes not, but all were created recently and all serve the purpose
of diverting attention from the Syrian protests. While often annoying
to users, accounts set up to tweet links across a hashtag are not in
violation of Twitter's terms of use. Twitter's help centre suggests blocking users
to prevent seeing their content. But without third-party software,
blocking doesn't remove a user from a search. Nevertheless, although
Twitter shies away from moderating content and removing users, the
search functionality favours users with a complete username, profile and photograph, and users who automate their tweets can be removed from search.

After
numerous complaints, that's exactly what has happened to the #Syria
bots. Though they can still be viewed by their followers and those who
input the URL directly, Syrian hashtag searches – vital to many hoping
to gain firsthand news from the country – are no longer flooded with
links to photographs and football stats. Syrians still face numerous
obstacles online – from the fear of security forces infiltrating their
accounts, to the red lines placed on free speech – but this one small
victory means that, in the battle for narrative at least, they've
won.

How British spies covertly shape the flow of information online to 'discredit' their targets

British
spies build fake websites, impersonate people, and create "persuasive"
YouTube videos to disrupt their targets' activities, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
JTRIG, or the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, is part of
British spy agency GCHQ, and was first revealed publicly in documents
leaked by exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. A newly published
document dating from 2011, which Business Insider has been unable to
independently verify, appears to shed more light on the secretive
group's activities. In one section, the document lists a number of the
tactics that JTRIG staff have employed. These include:

These
techniques are deployed against a number of law enforcement targets,
including suspects believed to be engaged in "online credit card fraud
and child exploitation." It also co-operates with other domestic British
law enforcement agencies, and helps "[provide] evidence for judicial
outcomes" and monitoring domestic terrorist groups. The documents also
go into detail about psychological research that could be used to help
promote JTRIG's goals. "Theories and research in the field of social
psychology may prove particularly useful for informing JTRIG's effects
and online HUMINT operations," one document says, identifying topics
including "conformity," "obedience," and "psychological profiling" as
"particularly relevant for social influence." In
short: The documents — if accurate — demonstrate how the British spy
agency uses sophisticated psychological techniques to try and shape the
flow of information online to achieve its strategic goals. When reached
for comment, a GCHQ spokesperson provided Business Insider with the
following statement:It
is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters.
Furthermore, all of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a
strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are
authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous
oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and
Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence
and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support
this position. In addition, the UK's interception regime is entirely
compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.Source:http://www.businessinsider.com/gchq-spies-discredit-targets-on-the-internet-2015-6

Pentagon spent millions studying how
to influence social media

The
Pentagon’s research lab has funded dozens of studies concerning the use
of social media, the Guardian reported on Tuesday, raising further
questions about what kind of data is of interest to governments around
the globe. Just days after a report published by researchers at Facebook
revealed that users of the social media site had been manipulated for
science, Ben Quinn and James Ball at the Guardian
wrote this week that DARPA — the Pentagon-run Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency — has in one way or another funded several studies
recently that set out to explore that social networking site, as well as
users of Twitter, Pinterest, Kickstarter and others. The journalists’
report stems from a list of publications that went live on DARPA’s site
late last month concerning its Social Media in Strategic Communications,
or SMISC, program.

“The
general goal of the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)
program is to develop a new science of social networks built on an
emerging technology base,” a statement there reads. “Through the
program, DARPA seeks to develop tools to support the efforts of human
operators to counter misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful
information.”

From there, visitors to the site can view any
of dozens of studies from researchers at the likes of the University of
Southern California, IBM or Georgia Tech Research Institute who have
relied either fully or partially on Pentagon money to conduct social
media studies. According to the journalists, the projects funded by the
federal agency run the gamut of social media and include a number of
studies sure to raise a few eyebrows. Formed in 1958, DARPA has been
instrumental in the Pentagon's development of drones, robotics and even
the internet.

“While some elements of the multi-million dollar
project might raise a wry smile – research has included analysis of the
tweets of celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, in an
attempt to understand influence on Twitter – others have resulted in the
buildup of massive datasets of tweets and additional types social media
posts,” the Guardian reported.

“The project list includes a
study of how activists with the Occupy movement used Twitter as well as a
range of research on tracking internet memes and some about
understanding how influence behavior (liking, following, retweeting)
happens on a range of popular social media platforms like Pinterest,
Twitter, Kickstarter, Digg and Reddit.”

Responding to the Guardian’s request for comment, DARPA defended the lengthy list of social media studies.

“Social media is changing the way people inform themselves, share
ideas, and organize themselves into interest groups, including some that
aim to harm the United States,” the Guardian quotes an agency
spokesperson as saying. “DARPA supports academic research that seeks to
understand some of these dynamics through analyses of publicly available
discussions conducted on social media platforms.”

Revelations
concerning DARPA’s role in these studies comes only days after the
researchers involved in the controversial Facebook report publically apologized
for manipulating the posts that appeared on users’ news feeds to see
how emotions can carry across the web. “The goal of all of our research
at Facebook is to learn how to provide a better service,” Facebook
staffer and researcher Adam Kramer wrote. On the Pentagon’s part, DARPA
told the Guardian that the studies it has funded are essential to US
defense interests.Source: Revealed: Pentagon spent millions studying how to influence social media

How Western media largely ignored State Dept-Google-Al Jazeera plot against Assad

The
Western media has quietly ignored an unexpected collaboration between
Washington, Google, and “independent” Al Jazeera aimed at helping to
overthrow Syria’s Bashar Assad. Would they be as oblivious to a similar
cozy “partnership” involving Russia? Last Monday, WikiLeaks lifted the
lid on a correspondence between Jared Cohen, the President of ‘Google
Ideas,’ and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff in the
summer of 2012. In his July 25, 2012 email to top State Department’s
officials, Cohen pitched his about-to-be-launched “tool” to Clinton’s
inner circle, asking it to “keep close hold” of it. The leak revealing
the project, which would seem to be an outrageous scandal to some, has
actually been quite difficult to spot in the news. Since WikiLeaks
released the latest batch of Clinton’s emails on March 21, a Google news
search spits back about 30 web sources related to the story.

Of
those, only two – The Independent and Daily Mail – could arguably be
considered major mainstream media outlets. That means there were slim
chances that the eye of an average newsreader would catch wind of the
State Department’s teamwork with the US’ biggest tech giant, Google, and
Arab media outlet Al Jazeera. According to what Cohen wrote, it appears
that Google’s innovative visualizer worked to “publicly track and map
the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are
coming from.”

“Our logic behind this is that while many people
are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping
the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to
defect and giving confidence to the opposition,” he said.

Google
also collaborated with Al Jazeera, which took primary ownership over the
tool, because of “how hard” it was to get information out of Syria. At
the State Department, the idea was lauded and passed on to Clinton via
her private email by deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan as “a pretty
cool idea.” RT asked media expert Lionel why the revelations failed to receive much attention in the Western media.

“I
don’t expect a reaction from Western media because Western media hasn’t
even read this, has no idea about this,” Lionel told RT. “But can you
imagine if the same set of facts were involved with the different
countries, different corporations around the world depending upon your
frame of reference. This would either be an outrage or ‘well, maybe this
is a delightful and benign cooperation, an independent tech giant…and
all for the common good of liberty’ and whatever. It depends upon your
perspective.”

Another curious aspect is the fact that the
WikiLeaks release directly involved Clinton’s email, which has been a
hot topic tainting her presidential campaign for a year now. Clinton’s
opponents as well as the US media have been taking nearly every
opportunity to poke her for her “careless”
misdeed – with the notable exception of this story. The three parties
in this collaboration did not end up together by chance, either. Funded
by the Qatari government, Al Jazeera portrays
itself as “the first independent news channel in the Arab world” and
“one of the world’s most influential news networks,” whose main goal is
it to give “a global audience an alternative voice.” Qatar has been
largely supporting the rebels in the Syrian conflict, along with
Washington and other anti-Assad powers that even mulled launching a
direct military intervention on Syrian soil last October. It turned out
that Google’s Syrian Defector Tracking was a good fit for Al Jazeera. It
even ended up winning the channel a prestigious Online Media Award for
“Best technical innovation.”

“This is going to show you very
fascinating aspects of the new warfare – how media, and corporations and
various platforms are merging together. We are not sure who the
military is, who is the government,” Lionel said. He suggested that the
State Department’s reluctance to release Clinton’s emails could be
explained by the intention to hide “the conflation of allegedly private
industry with the government.”

“We have this new world here. We
have the government and we have the Pentagon, DAPRA and defense advanced
research program agency, we have private industry, we have these
various platforms. We have this new introduction of mercenary groups and
private contacting teams. [But] our country [the US] has had a very
strict barrier, Posse Comitatus, that separates private law enforcement
from military," Lionel said. "There have always been distinctions and
barriers and jurisdiction alliance. In this new world, these barriers
are being eliminated, dissolved.”

As Lionel says, the
collaboration between Google and the US government only seems to be
“innocent” if there is a bias towards “who you like… and the information
that’s being propagated.” When contacted by RT, Google declined to
comment on the situation, yet did not hesitate to proudly stress Al
Jazeera’s achievement. “No comment, but pointing out that this data
visualization project was very public, Al Jazeera won a journalism award
for it,” the tech giant said in an email. Given these circumstances, it
would not hurt to wonder what the Western media’s reaction might have
been if the same collaboration had occurred across the ocean and
involved, let’s say, the Russian government, a well-known media outlet,
and a Russian internet giant.

Since its inception in 2005, RT has
often been labeled as anything ranging from a “Russian propaganda
machine” to a “propaganda bullhorn” by high-profile Western officials
and politicians. “If RT wanted PR in American media, this is exactly the
move it should make. You would never hear the end of that on American
media,” Ted Rall, a political cartoonist and author, told RT. “You
really don’t have a right to call anyone a propaganda if you yourself is
doing the same thing.” As for Al Jazeera’s prize winning tool, it
appears to be currently defunct for unspecified reasons.

Social Media and the Destabilization of Cuba: USAID’s Secret “Cuban Twitter” Intended to Stir Unrest

Reported
by the Associated Press, Washington has created a “Cuban Twitter” with a
view to creating social unrest. The ultimate objective of this and
other initiatives is to demonize and weaken the Cuban Communist
government. This program should be seen as part of Washington’s
Worldwide actions to implement regime change in countries which do not
abide by U.S. diktats. The social media program entitled ZunZuneo was
part of a secret plan under the auspices of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID):

In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to
Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social
media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government. McSpedon
and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and
Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging
network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the
network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system
of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit
unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company’s ties to
the U.S. government.

The project was financed by USAID as part of a “democracy” building
agenda. USAID is known to have routine contacts with the CIA. The U.S.
Agency for International Development was essentially a front for a
carefully planned intelligence operation:

Documents show the U.S.
government planned to build a subscriber base through
“non-controversial content”: news messages on soccer, music, and
hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of
subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce
political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize “smart mobs” —
mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice that might trigger a Cuban
Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, “renegotiate the balance of
power between the state and society.” At its peak, the project drew in
more than 40,000 Cubans to share news and exchange opinions. But its
subscribers were never aware it was created by the U.S. government, or
that American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope
that it might be used for political purposes.

The Cuban media
reacted to the ZunZuneo twitter project by pointing to a continuous
process of covert operations directed against Cuba since the 1961 Bay of
Pigs failed invasion. It is worth noting that Cuba has been under a US
sanctions regime since 1962. The ZunZuneo initiative is viewed by the
Cuba government as part of a process of non-conventional warfare
(including cyber warfare) waged against countries (e.g. Venezuela,
Ukraine) which do not abide by Washington’s demands. The destabilization
of Cuba has been on drawing board of the US State Department and the
CIA since the 1960s. Actions directed against Cuba are undertaken
through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Economic Support Fund
(ESF) of the US State Department. Other organizations providing funding
and operating in tandem with USAID and the NED are Freedom House, The
Center for a Free Cuba, The Institute for Democracy in Cuba, the Cuban
Dissidence Task Group, the International Republican Institute (IRI).
Documented by Eva Golinger, USAID channels these destabilizing programs
through an “Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) for Cuba with a view
to engaging “in work with youths” and in the “independent initiatives
of the mass media,” According to Golinger:

The
OTI handles liquid funds in dollars “in very large quantities, without
having to go through a lot of review or accountability at the US
Congress.” There are two major points of difference between traditional
warfare and irregular warfare: objectives and tactics, she pointed out.
Irregular warfare is aimed at controlling the civilian population and
neutralizing the State, and its main tactic is ‘counterinsurgency,’
which is the use of indirect and asymmetric techniques, such as
subversion, infiltration, psychological operations, cultural penetration
and military deceit.” (Voltaire Net, August 9, 2009)

According to Prensa Latina, “Zun Zuneo joins an extensive list of
secret anti-Cuban operations” as well as numerous plots to assassinate
Fidel Castro. The Cuban government of Raul Castro has requested the US
to cease these actions:

Prensa
Latina recalled a 1 January speech in which President Raúl Castro
warned of “attempts to subtly introduce platforms for neoliberal thought
and for the restoration of neocolonial capitalism”. “Castro’s
denunciations of the US government’s destabilizing attempts against Cuba
were corroborated by today’s revelation of a plan to push Cuban youth
toward the counterrevolution, with the participation of a US agency,”
Prensa Latina said. (Guardian, April 4, 2014)

The existence of this program was known to the Cuban authorities prior
to the publication of the AP report. According to Josefina Vidal,
director of U.S. affairs at Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, in a official
statement, the ZunZuneo program:

“shows
once again that the United States government has not renounced its
plans of subversion against Cuba, which have as their aim the creation
of situations of destabilization in our country to create changes in the
public order and toward which it continues to devote
multimillion-dollar budgets each year. The government of the United
States must respect international law and the goals and principles of
the United Nations charter and, therefore, cease its illegal and
clandestine actions against Cuba, which are rejected by the Cuban people
and international public opinion”

The secret Cuba twitter will be the object of debate at the US Congress in a session of the House Oversight Subcommittee.

Western Spy Agencies Manipulate Web Discussions to Promote Government Propaganda

The alternative media has documented for 5 years that the government uses disinformation and disruption (and here) on the web to discredit activists and manipulate public opinion, just like it smears traditional television and print reporters who question the government too acutely. We’ve long reported that the government censors and manipulates social media. More proof here. New Edward Snowden documents confirm that Britain’s spy agency is doing so. As Glenn Greenwald writes today:One
of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden
archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to
manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of
deception and reputation-destruction.***These
agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp
online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the
internet itself. Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are
two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet
in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use
social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and
activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how
extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of
using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material
to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim
blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose
reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on
various forums.***Critically,
the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far
beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and
their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact,
the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of
using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people
suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more
broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest
activity for political ends. The title page of one of these documents
reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries”
by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to
do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally
involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes….***It
is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government
agencies being able to target any individuals they want – who have never
been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes – with these
sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and
disruption. There is a strong argument to make, as Jay Leiderman demonstrated in the Guardian in the context of the Paypal 14 hacktivist persecution,
that the “denial of service” tactics used by hacktivists result in (at
most) trivial damage (far less than the cyber-warfare tactics favored by the US and UK) and are far more akin to the type of political protest protected by the First Amendment.The
broader point is that, far beyond hacktivists, these surveillance
agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin
people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even
though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their
actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national
security threats. As Anonymous expert Gabriella Coleman of McGill
University told me, “targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to
targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs, resulting in
the stifling of legitimate dissent.” Pointing to this study
she published, Professor Coleman vehemently contested the assertion
that “there is anything terrorist/violent in their actions.”Government
plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly
infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate
false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard
Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s
former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008
proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and
pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups
and websites, as well as other activist groups. [Background on Sunstein
here and here.]
Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online
social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views
as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government.[...]

Former editor of largest newspaper in Germany revealed the CIA pays
journalists in Germany, France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand to
plant fake stories - and the CIA is trying to bring war to Russia

Dr
Udo Ulfkotte, the former German newspaper editor whose bestselling book
exposed how the CIA controls German media, has been found dead. He was
56. Ulfkotte was an editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of
the largest newspapers in Germany, when he published Bought Journalists,
the bestselling book that cost him his job and perhaps his life.

German
media, who were banned from reporting on his work in recent years, are
reporting he died of “heart failure”. Acknowledging that his life was
under threat, Ulfkotte explained that he was in a better position than
most journalists to expose the truth because he didn’t have any children
who could be threatened.

Speaking to the Russian newspaper
Russian Insider, Ulkfotte said: “When I told the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung (Ulfkotte’s newspaper) that I would publish the book, their
lawyers sent me a letter threatening with all legal consequences if I
would publish any names or secrets – but I don’t mind. You see, I don’t
have children to take care of.“

His fears for a war in Europe,
lead him to his decision to tell the truth about corporate media being
controlled by intelligence services on behalf of the financial class.

“I’ve
been a journalist for about 25 years, and I’ve been educated to lie, to
betray, and not to tell the truth to the public,” Ulfkotte told Russia
Today. “I was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
Why? Because I am pro-American.”

“The German and American media
tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This
is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say… it is not
right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make
propaganda against Russia.”

Ulfkotte said most corporate media
journalists in the United States and Europe are “so-called non-official
cover,” meaning that they work for an intelligence agency. “I think it
is especially the case with British journalists, because they have a
much closer relationship. It is especially the case with Israeli
journalists. Of course with French journalists. … It is the case for
Australians, [with] journalists from New Zealand, from Taiwan, well,
there is many countries,” he said.

Ulfkotte’s book Bought
Journalists became a bestseller in Germany but, in a bizarre twist which
Ulfkotte says characterizes the disconnect caused by CIA control of the
western media, the book cannot be reported on by the German press.

Ulfkotte
said: “No German mainstream journalist is allowed to report about [my]
book. Otherwise he or she will be sacked. So we have a bestseller now
that no German journalist is allowed to write or talk about.”

Among
the stories Ulfkotte says he was ordered by the CIA to plant in his
newspaper was a fake story that Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi was
building poison gas factories in 2011. “The German and American media
tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia,” he
told RT.

“This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand
up and say … it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate
people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my
colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to
betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe. … I am very
fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don’t like to have this situation
again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people
who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists
too. … We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. … I don’t
want this anymore; I’m fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana
republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom.”

Do We Live in a Police State? The latest WikiLeaks revelations tell us the answer is yes

WikiLeaks
and Julian Assange would have gone down in history as the greatest
enemies of government oppression of all kinds in any case, but their latest release
– a comprehensive exposé of the US intelligence community’s cyberwar
tools and techniques – is truly the capstone of their career. And given
that this release – dubbed “Vault 7” – amounts to just one percent of
the documents they intend to publish, one can only look forward to the
coming days with a mixture of joyful anticipation and ominous fear. Fear
because the power of the Deep State is even more forbidding – and
seemingly invincible – than anyone knew. Joyful anticipation because,
for the first time, it is dawning on the most unlikely people
that we are, for all intents and purposes, living in a police state. I
was struck by this while watching Sean Hannity’s show last [Wednesday]
night – yes, Fox is my go-to news channel – and listening to both
Hannity and his guests, including the ultra-conservative Laura Ingraham,
inveigh against the “Deep State.” For people like Hannity, Ingraham,
and Newt Gingrich (of all people!) to be talking about the Surveillance
State with fear – and outrage – in their voices says two things about
our current predicament: 1) Due to the heroic efforts of Julian Assange
in exposing the power and ruthlessness of the Deep State, the political
landscape in this country is undergoing a major realignment, with
conservatives returning to their historic role as the greatest defenders
of civil liberties, and 2) American “liberalism” – which now champions the Deep State as the savior of the country – has become a toxic brew that is fundamentally totalitarian. On
the first point: yes, there are more than a few holdouts, like Bill
O’Reilly and the neocons, but the latter are increasingly isolated, and
the former is increasingly irrelevant. What we are seeing, as the role
of the “intelligence community” in basically leading a seditious
conspiracy against a sitting President is revealed, is a complete switch
in the political polarities in this country: what passes for the “left”
has become the biggest advocate of the Surveillance State, and the
rising populist right is coming to the hard-won conclusion that we are
rapidly becoming a police state. Ah, but wait! That’s not the whole story: bear with me for a while. The
material in “Vault 7” is extensive: it ranges from examining the ways
in which a Samsung television set that is seemingly turned off can be–
and no doubt has been – used to spy on the conversations and activities
of a room’s occupants, to the various ways in which our spooks
infiltrate and subvert common electronic devices, such as the I-Phone,
in order to gather information. “Infected phones,” we are told in the
introduction to the material, “can be instructed to send the CIA the
user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly
activate the phone’s camera and microphone.” The CIA is even working on
remotely controlling the electronic steering systems installed in cars –
a perfect route to pulling off an assassination that looks like an
“accident.” Not that the intelligence services of the “leader of the
Free World” would ever consider such an act. The
massive infection of commonly used software and electronic devices
leads to a major problem: proliferation. As these viruses and other
invasive programs are unleashed on an unsuspecting public, they fall
into the hands of a variety of bad actors: foreign governments,
criminals, and teenagers on a lark (not necessarily in descending order
of malevolence). This plague is being spread over the Internet by a
veritable army of CIA hackers: “By the end of 2016,” WikiLeaks tells us,
“the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence
(CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a
thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’
malware.” The inevitable end result: a world infected with so much
malware that computers become almost useless – and this parlous
condition is paid for by you, the American taxpayer. This
is, in effect, the cybernetic equivalent of the Iraq war – an invasion
that led to such unintended consequences as the rise of ISIS, the
devastation of Syria, and the empowerment of Iran. In short, a war that
made us less safe. One
aspect of the Vault 7 data dump that’s drawing particular attention is
the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s “Umbrage group,” which, we are told,
“collects and maintains a substantial library
of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states
including the Russian Federation.” The idea is to mask the Agency’s
cyberwar operations by attempting to hide the unique forensic attributes
of its techniques. The process of attribution, WikiLeaks explains, is
“analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple
separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion
that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is
solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.” So how does the CIA hide its “fingerprints”? It
simply draws on computer code used by its adversaries – and not only
Russia – and inserts it into its own handcrafted malware and other
invasive programs, thus leaving Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean)
fingerprints on the handiwork of CIA hackers. Now
you’ll recall that the attribution of the DNC/Podesta email hacks was
“proved” by the DNC’s hired hands on the basis of the supposedlyunique
characteristics of the programs used by the supposed Russian hackers.
One of these alleged Russians even left behind
the name of Felix Dzerzhinsky – founder of the Soviet KGB – embedded in
the code, hardly the height of subtlety. So now we learn that the CIA
has perfected the art of imitating its rivals, mimicking the Russians –
or whomever – in a perfect setup for a “false flag” scenario. After
months of the nonstop campaign to demonize the Russians as “subverting
our democracy” and supposedly throwing the election to Donald Trump by
hacking the DNC and Podesta, a new possibility begins to emerge. I say
“possibility” because, despite the craziness that is fast becoming the
norm, there has got to be a limit to it – or does there? No,
I’m not suggesting the CIA hacked the DNC and poor hapless John
Podesta. Yet others are suggesting something even more explosive. In an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News television program, retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer,
a former senior intelligence officer, told the audience that he had
heard from his intelligence contacts that retired NSA officials were
responsible for hacking the DNC and Podesta, and then releasing the
materials to WikiLeaks His co-guest, William Binney, a former NSA insider who was among the first to expose the extent of that agency’s surveillance of American citizens, agreed. This is nothing new: Judge Andrew Napolitano said the same thing months ago. The alleged motivation was animus toward Mrs. Clinton. Although
“the Russians did it” is now the accepted conventional wisdom, which
hardly anyone bothers to question anymore, the level of evidence
proffered to support this conclusion has been laughably inadequate. And
you’ll note that, although the CIA and the FBI, along with other
intelligence agencies, advanced this hypothesis with “high confidence,”
the NSA demurred, awarding it with only “moderate” confidence. And
one more thing: I found it extremely odd that, when the hacking of the
DNC and John Podesta’s email was discovered, party officials refused
to let the FBI and other law enforcement agencies examine either their
server or Podesta’s devices. Instead, they gave it over to CrowdStrike, a
private firm that regularly does business with the DNC. CrowdStrike
then came out with the now-accepted analysis that it was a Russian job. Could it be that the “explanation” for the hacking was determined in advance? I
don’t know the answer to that question. Nor do I necessarily buy Col.
Shaffer’s thesis. What I’m saying is that it’s entirely possible –
indeed, it is just as likely, given what we know now, as pinning the
blame Vladimir Putin.

This is everything Edward Snowden revealed in one year of unprecedented top-secret leaks

In
June 2013, The Guardian reported the first leak based on top-secret
documents that then 29-year-old Edward Snowden stole from the National
Security Agency. At the time, Snowden worked as an intelligence
contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton
in Hawaii. That leak would certainly not be the last. In the years
since, journalists have released more than 7,000 top-secret documents
that Snowden entrusted them with, which some believe is less than 1%
of the entire archive. Now, with the film "Snowden" premiering Friday,
it's worth taking a look back at what secrets Snowden actually revealed.
We've compiled every single leak that came out in the first year of the
Snowden saga, though there were many more that came later. Snowden downloaded up to 1.5 million files,
according to national intelligence officials, before jetting from
Hawaii to Hong Kong to meet with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura
Poitras. After he handed off his treasure trove of documents, he flew
from Hong Kong and later became stranded in Moscow. His future was far
from certain, as the journalists he trusted started revealing his
secrets. Here is everything that Snowden's leaks revealed between 2013
and 2014: • With a top-secret court order, the NSA collected the telephone records from millions of Verizon customers. — June 6, 2013•
The NSA accessed and collected data through back doors into US internet
companies such as Google and Facebook with a program called Prism. — June 7, 2013•
An 18-page presidential memo shows Obama ordering intelligence
officials to draw up a list of overseas targets for cyberattacks. — June 7, 2013•
Documents reveal the NSA's Boundless Informant program, which gives the
agency near real-time ability to understand how much intelligence
coverage there is on certain areas through use of a "heat map." — June 8, 2013• The NSA was hacking computers in Hong Kong and mainland China, few of which were military systems. — June 13, 2013• Britain's GCHQ
(its intelligence agency) intercepted phone and internet communications
of foreign politicians attending two G-20 meetings in London in 2009. —
June 16, 2013•
Top-secret procedures show steps the NSA must take to target and
collect data from "non-US persons" and how it must minimize data
collected on US citizens. — June 20, 2013•
Britain's GCHQ taps fiber-optic cables to collect and store global
email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories, and calls, and then
shares the data with the NSA. — June 21, 2013•
The NSA has a program codenamed EvilOlive that collects and stores
large quantities of Americans' internet metadata, which contains only
certain information about online content. Email metadata, for example,
reveals the sender and recipient addresses and time but not content or
subject. — June 27, 2013•
Until 2011, the Obama administration permitted the NSA's continued
collection of vast amounts of Americans' email and internet metadata
under a Bush-era program called Stellar Wind. — June 27, 2013• The US government bugged the offices of the European Union in New York, Washington, and Brussels. — June 29, 2013• The US government spies on at least 38 foreign embassies and missions, using a variety of electronic surveillance methods. — June 30, 2013• The NSA spies on millions of phone calls, emails, and text messages of ordinary German citizens. — June 30, 2013• Using a program called Fairview, the NSA intercepts internet and phone-call data of Brazilian citizens. — July 6, 2013• Monitoring stations set up in Australia and New Zealand help feed data back to NSA's XKeyscore program. — July 6, 2013•
The NSA conducts surveillance on citizens in a number of Latin American
countries, including Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Panama, Ecuador,
Peru, and others. The agency also sought information on oil, energy, and
trade. — July 9, 2013•
The Washington Post publishes a new slide detailing NSA's "Upstream"
program of collecting communications from tech companies through
fiber-optic cables to then feed into its Prism database. — July 10, 2013• Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, BND, helps contribute data to the NSA's XKeyscore program. — July 20, 2013•
NSA analysts, using the XKeyscore program, can search through enormous
databases of emails, online chats, and browsing histories of targets. — July 31, 2013•
The US government paid Britain's GCHQ roughly $155 million over three
years to gain access and influence over its spying programs. — August 1, 2013•
Seven of the world's leading telecommunications companies provide GCHQ
with secret, unlimited access to their network of undersea cables. — August 2, 2013•
The NSA provided surveillance to US diplomats in order to give them the
upper hand in negotiations at the UN Summit of the Americas. — August 2, 2013• The NSA sifts through vast amounts of Americans' email and text communications going in and out of the country. — August 8, 2013•
Internal NSA document reveals an agency "loophole" that allows a secret
backdoor for the agency to search its databases for US citizens' emails
and phone calls without a warrant. — August 9, 2013• NSA collection on Japan is reportedly maintained at the same priority as France and Germany. — August 12, 2013• The NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, according to an internal audit. — August 15, 2013•
NSA analysts revealed to have sometimes spied on love interests, with
the practice common enough to have coined the term LOVEINT, or love
intercepts. (It was unclear whether this report came from Snowden docs.)
— August 23, 2013•
Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to
intercept emails, phone calls, and web traffic, The Independent reports, citing Snowden documents. Snowden denies giving The Independent any documents, alleging the UK government leaked them in an attempt to discredit him. — August 23, 2013• The top-secret US intelligence "black budget" is revealed for 2013, with 16 spy agencies having a budget of $52.6 billion. — August 29, 2013•
Expanding upon data gleaned from the "black budget," the NSA is found
to be paying hundreds of millions of dollars each year to US companies
for access to their networks. — August 29, 2013• The US carried out 231 offensive cyberattacks in 2011. — August 30, 2013• The NSA hacked into Qatar-based media network Al Jazeera's internal communications system. — August 31, 2013• The NSA spied on former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (then a candidate). — September 1, 2013•
Using a "man in the middle" attack, NSA spied on Google, the French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunications, and the Brazilian oil company Petrobras. —
September 2, 2013• A US intelligence "black budget" reveals Al Qaeda's effort to jam, hack, and/or shoot down US surveillance drones. — September 3, 2013•
A joint investigation by ProPublica, The New York Times, and The
Guardian finds the NSA is winning its war against internet encryption
with supercomputers, technical know-how, and court orders. — September 5, 2013•
The NSA has the ability to access user data for most major smartphones
on the market, including Apple iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Google Android
phones. — September 7, 2013•
The NSA shares raw intelligence data (with information about American
citizens) to Israel with an information-sharing agreement. — September 11, 2013• The NSA monitors banks and credit institutions for a comprehensive database that can track the global flow of money. — September 16, 2013• Britain's GCHQ launched a cyberattack against Belgacom, a partly state-owned Belgian telecommunications company. — September 20, 2013•
The NSA spies on Indian diplomats and other officials in an effort to
gain insight into the country's nuclear and space programs. — September 23, 2013•
The NSA's internal "wiki" website characterizes political and legal
opposition to drone attacks as part of "propaganda campaigns" from
America's "adversaries." — September 25, 2013•
Since 2010, the NSA has used metadata augmented with other data from
public, commercial, and other sources to create sophisticated graphs
that map Americans' social connections. — September 28, 2013•
The NSA stores a massive amount of internet metadata from internet
users, regardless of whether they are being targeted, for up to one year
in a database called Marina. — September 30, 2013• The NSA and GCHQ worked together to compromise the anonymous web-browsing Tor network. — October 4, 2013•
Canada's signals intelligence agency, CSEC, spied on phone and computer
networks of Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy and shared the
information with the "Five Eyes" intelligence services of the US,
Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. — October 7, 2013• The NSA collected more than 250 million email contact lists from services such as Yahoo and Gmail. — October 14, 2013• NSA surveillance was revealed to play a key role in targeting for overseas drone strikes. — October 16, 2013•
The NSA spied on French citizens, companies, and diplomats, and
monitored communications at France's embassy in Washington and its UN
office in New York. — October 21, 2013• The NSA tapped the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. — October 23, 2013• The NSA spied on Italian citizens, companies, and government officials. — October 24, 2013•
The NSA monitored the phone calls of 35 world leaders and encouraged
other government agencies to share their "Rolodexes" of foreign
politicians so it could monitor them. — October 25, 2013• The NSA spied on Spanish leaders and citizens. — October 25, 2013• The NSA stations surveillance teams at 80 locations around the world. — October 27, 2013•
A joint program between the NSA and Britain's GCHQ called Muscular
infiltrates and copies data flowing out of Yahoo and Google's overseas
data centers. One slide boasted of "SSL added and removed here!" with a
smiley face. — October 30, 2013• The NSA spied on the Vatican. (The Panorama website did not cite Snowden as the source.) — October 30, 2013One slide boasted of "SSL added and removed here!" with a smiley face. • Australia's intelligence service has surveillance teams stationed in Australian embassies around Asia and the Pacific. — October 31, 2013• One document reveals tech companies play a key role in NSA intelligence reports and data collection. — November 1, 2013• Britain's GCHQ and other European spy agencies work together to conduct mass surveillance. — November 1, 2013•
Strategic missions of the NSA are revealed, which include combatting
terrorism and nuclear proliferation, as well as pursuing US diplomatic
and economic advantage. — November 2, 2013•
Australia's Defense Signals Directorate and the NSA worked together to
spy on Indonesia during a UN climate change conference in 2007. — November 2, 2013• The NSA spied on OPEC. — November 11, 2013•
GCHQ monitored the booking systems of 350 high-end hotels with a
program called Royal Concierge, which sniffed for booking confirmations
sent to diplomatic email addresses that would be flagged for further
surveillance. — November 17, 2013•
Australia's DSD spied on the cellphones of top Indonesian officials,
including the president, first lady, and several cabinet ministers. — November 18, 2013• The NSA spied on millions of cellphone calls in Norway in one 30-day period. — November 19, 2013• The British government struck a secret deal with the NSA to share phone, internet, and email records of UK citizens. — November 20, 2013•
A NSA strategy document reveals the agency's goal to acquire data from
"anyone, anytime, anywhere" and expand its already broad legal powers. —
November 22, 2013• The NSA infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malware designed to steal sensitive information. — November 23, 2013• The NSA gathers evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a plan to discredit Muslim jihadists. — November 26, 2013• Working with Canadian intelligence, the NSA spied on foreign diplomats at the G-8 and G-20 summits in Toronto in 2010. — November 28, 2013• The Netherlands' intelligence service gathers data on web-forum users and shares it with the NSA. — November 30, 2013•
A draft document reveals Australia offered to share information
collected on ordinary Australian citizens with the NSA and other "Five
Eyes" partners. — December 1, 2013• The NSA siphons billions of foreign cellphone location records into its database. — December 4, 2013•
Widespread spying is revealed in Italy, with the NSA spying on ordinary
Italians as well as diplomats and political leaders. — December 5, 2013• Swedish intelligence was revealed to be spying on Russian leaders, then passing it on to the NSA. — December 5, 2013•
A document reveals the extent of the relationship between NSA and
Canadian counterparts, which includes information-sharing and Canada
allowing NSA analysts access to covert sites it sets up. — December 9, 2013•
Intelligence operatives with NSA and GCHQ infiltrate online video games
such as "World of Warcraft" in an effort to catch and stop terrorist
plots. — December 9, 2013•
Piggybacking on online "cookies" acquired by Google that advertisers
use to track consumer preferences, the NSA is able to locate new targets
for hacking. — December 10, 2013• The NSA has the ability to decrypt the common A5/1 cellphone encryption cipher. — December 13, 2013• The NSA secretly paid the computer security firm RSA $10 million to implement a "back door" into its encryption. — December 20, 2013•
A document reveals how Britain's GCHQ spied on Germany, Israel, the
European Union, and several nongovernmental organizations. — December 20, 2013•
With a $79.7 million research program, the NSA is working on a quantum
computer that would be able to crack most types of encryption. — January 2, 2014•
Using radio transmitters on tiny circuit boards or USB drives, the NSA
can gain access to computers not connected to the internet. — January 14, 2014• The NSA scoops "pretty much everything it can" in untargeted collection of foreign text messages for its Dishfire database. — January 16, 2014• The NSA scoops up personal data mined from smartphone apps such as Angry Birds. — January 27, 2014•
A GCHQ program called Squeaky Dolphin monitors YouTube, Facebook, and
Blogger for "broad real-time monitoring of online activity." — January 27, 2014The NSA scoops "pretty much everything it can" in untargeted collection of foreign text messages. • The NSA spied on negotiators during the 2009 UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. — January 29, 2014•
CSEC, Canada's national cryptologic agency, tested a pilot program with
the NSA that captured metadata from users who had logged into free
airport Wi-Fi. — January 30, 2014•
Britain's GCHQ waged war on hacker groups such as Anonymous and
Lulzsec, mounting Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks and infiltrating
their chat rooms. — February 5, 2014• The NSA reportedly monitored former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the run-up to the Iraq war. — February 5, 2014• Britain's GCHQ used "dirty tricks" such as computer viruses and sexual "honey traps" to target adversaries. — February 7, 2014•
The US's "targeted killing" program of drone strikes relies mostly on
cellphone metadata and geolocation, rather than on-the-ground human
intelligence. — February 10, 2014•
An American law firm was monitored by the Australian Signals
Directorate while representing the government of Indonesia during a
trade dispute. — February 15, 2014•
The NSA and Britain's GCHQ reportedly monitored traffic to the
WikiLeaks website and considered a move to monitor communications going
to or from WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay. — February 18, 2014• Britain's GCHQ conducts covert operations to disrupt and shape online discourse. — February 24, 2014•
Britain's GCHQ, using a program called Optic Nerve, intercepted and
stored webcam images from millions of Yahoo users, then passed them on
to the NSA's XKeyscore database. — February 28, 2014•
The NSA shared intelligence that helped the Dutch navy capture a ship
hijacked by pirates off Somalia, and the Netherlands regularly shares
information with the NSA regarding Somalia and Afghanistan. — March 5, 2014•
The NSA has an advice columnist similar to "Dear Abby" who writes an
"Ask Zelda" column distributed on the agency's internal network. — March 7, 2014•
NSA developed sophisticated malware "implants" to infect millions of
computers worldwide. In one example, the NSA posed as a fake Facebook
server to infect a target's computer and steal files. — March 12, 2014•
Document reveals that, while many foreign governments share information
with NSA, few senior officials outside of the intelligence or defense
sphere have any knowledge of it. — March 13, 2014•
The NSA built a system capable of recording "100%" of a foreign
country's phone calls with a voice intercept program called Mystic. The
Washington Post did not name the countries where the program was used. —
March 18, 2014• The NSA specifically targets foreign systems administrators to gain access to their networks. — March 20, 2014•
The NSA closely monitored the Chinese technology firm Huawei in attempt
to reveal ties between the company and the Chinese military. The agency
also spied on Chinese banks and other companies, as well as former
President Hu Jintao. — March 22, 2014• Malaysia's political leadership is a high-priority intelligence target for the US and Australia — March 30, 2014•
NSA and Britain's GCHQ discussed various methods of deception, use of
propaganda, mass messaging, and pushing stories on social media sites — April 4, 2014•
The Norwegian Intelligence Service is developing a supercomputer,
called Steel Winter, to decrypt and analyze data from Afghanistan,
Russia, and elsewhere. — April 26, 2013•
Britain's GCHQ asked the NSA for "unsupervised access" to the NSA's
vast databases. It was unclear whether the request was granted. — April 30, 2014•
The NSA physically intercepts routers, servers, and other computer
networking equipment before it's exported outside the US, implants "back
door" surveillance tools, then repackages them with a factory seal and
ships them out. — May 12, 2014•
The NSA is intercepting, recording, and archiving virtually every
cellphone call in the Bahamas and one other country, which The Intercept
redacted. It also reveals metadata collection on Mexico, Kenya, and the
Philippines. — May 19, 2014•
After giving journalist Glenn Greenwald a 72-hour warning to reveal the
nation redacted from his previous report on mass surveillance of an
entire country, WikLeaks reveals the country in question is Afghanistan.
— May 23, 2014• The NSA harvests millions of faces from web images for use in a previously undisclosed facial recognition database. — May 31, 2014

New study: Snowden’s disclosures about NSA spying had a scary effect on free speech

In June 2013, reporters at The Washington Post and the Guardian
ran a series of stories about the U.S. government’s surveillance
programs. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the National
Security Agency was harvesting huge swaths of online traffic — far
beyond what had been disclosed — and was working directly with top
Internet companies to spy on certain people. Glenn Greenwald, one of the Guardian journalists who reported the disclosures and a surveillance skeptic, argued in a 2014 TED talk
that privacy is a critical feature of open society. People act
differently when they know they're being watched. “Essential to what it
means to be a free and fulfilled human being is to have a place that we
can go and be free of the judgmental eyes of other people,” he said. Privacy advocates have argued
that widespread government surveillance has had a “chilling effect” —
it encourages meekness and conformity. If we think that authorities are
watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or
not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious. The
problem, though, is that it's difficult to judge the effect of
government-spying programs. How do you collect all the utterances that
people stopped themselves from saying? How do you count all the
conversations that weren’t had?

A new study
provides some insight into the repercussions of the Snowden
revelations, arguing that they happened so swiftly and were so
high-profile that they triggered a measurable shift in the way people
used the Internet. Jonathon
Penney, a PhD candidate at Oxford, analyzed Wikipedia traffic in the
months before and after the NSA’s spying became big news in 2013. Penney
found a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related
to terrorism, including those that mentioned “al-Qaeda,” “car bomb” or “Taliban.” "You
want to have informed citizens," Penney said. "If people are spooked or
deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism
and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic
debate." Even
though the NSA was supposed to target only foreigners, the immense
scale of its operations caused many to worry that innocent Americans
were getting caught in the dragnet. A Pew survey in 2015 showed that
about 40 percent of Americans were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that
the government was spying on their online activities. The
same survey showed that about 87 percent of American adults were aware
of the Snowden news stories. Of those people, about a third said they
had changed their Internet or phone habits as a result. For instance, 13
percent said they “avoided using certain terms” online; and 14 percent
said they were having more conversations face to face instead of over
the phone. The sudden, new knowledge about the surveillance programs had
increased their concerns about their privacy. Penney’s research, which is forthcoming in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, echoes the results of a similar study
conducted last year on Google Search data. Alex Marthews, a privacy
activist, and Catherine Tucker, a professor at MIT’s business school,
found that Google activity for certain keywords fell after the Snowden
stories were splashed on every front page. Both in the United States and
in other countries, people became reluctant to search for
terrorism-related words such as “dirty bomb” or “pandemic.” Penney
focused on Wikipedia pages related to sensitive topics specifically
flagged by the Department of Homeland Security. In a document provided to its analysts in 2011,
the DHS listed 48 terrorism terms that they should use when “monitoring
social media sites.” Penney collected traffic data on the English
Wikipedia pages most closely related to those terms. This chart from the
paper shows how the number of views dropped after the June 2013 news
articles. The amount of traffic immediately dropped and stayed low for
the subsequent 14 months.

Facebook,
the world’s top social media platform, is reportedly seeking to hire
hundreds of employees with US national security clearance licenses.
Purportedly with the aim of weeding out “fake news” and “foreign
meddling” in elections. If that plan,
reported by Bloomberg, sounds sinister, that’s because it is. For what
it means is that people who share the same worldview as US intelligence
agencies, the agencies who formulate classified information, will have a
direct bearing on what millions of consumers on Facebook are permitted
to access. It’s as close to outright US government censorship on the
internet as one can dare to imagine, and this on a nominally independent
global communication network. Your fun-loving place “where friends
meet.”

Welcome to Facespook!As
Bloomberg reports: “Workers with such [national security] clearances
can access information classified by the US government. Facebook plans
to use these people – and their ability to receive government
information about potential threats – in the company’s attempt to search
more proactively for questionable social media campaigns ahead of
elections.” A Facebook spokesman declined to comment, but the report sounds credible, especially given the context of anti-Russia hysteria. Over
the past year, since the election of Donald Trump as US president, the
political discourse has been dominated by “Russia-gate” – the notion
that somehow Kremlin-controlled hackers and news media meddled in the
election. The media angst in the US is comparable to the Red Scare
paranoia of the 1950s during the Cold War.Facebook
and other US internet companies have been hauled in front of
Congressional committees to declare what they know about alleged
“Russian influence campaigns.” Chief executives of Facebook, Google, and
Twitter, are due to be questioned again next month by the same panels. Mark
Zuckerberg, the 33-year-old CEO of Facebook, initially rebuffed claims
his company had unwittingly assisted Russian interference in the last US
in November. But after months of non-stop allegations by politicians
and prominent news media outlets vilifying Russia, Zuckerberg and the
other social media giants are buckling. Led,
perhaps unwittingly, by US intelligence fingering of Russian meddling,
Facebook, Google, and Twitter are now saying they have discovered
postings and advertisements “linked to the Russian government.” Notably,
the sources impugning the “offending ads” are the intelligence agencies
and members of Congress who are hawkish on the Russia-gate narrative.One
glaring weakness in this narrative is that the alleged “Russian ads”
involved a spend of $100,000 on Facebook. Twitter identified $274,000
worth of “Russian-linked ads.” Some of the information being promoted
appears to be entirely innocuous, such as pet-lovers sharing cute photos
of puppies. It
is far from clear how these ads are connected to Russian state agencies
allegedly attempting to subvert the US elections. Moscow has dismissed
the allegations. Much
of it is assumed and taken on face value from claims made by American
intelligence and their political and media associates. But what is clear
– albeit overlooked in much US media coverage – is the sheer
implausibility that the Russian government intended to warp the US
presidential election with a few hundred thousand dollars. Facebook
alone earns billions of dollars from advertising. The alleged Russian
ads represent a drop in the bucket. The expenditure and presumed impact
on public opinion is also negligible compared to the billions of dollars
American corporations donated to the election campaigns of both Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump.Alphabet
(Google’s parent company) and Facebook are among the top 50 biggest US
corporate donors in lobbying the Federal government and Congress. Last
year, the top 50 corporations reportedly spent
over $700 million, of which Alphabet and Facebook contributed $15
million and $8.7 million, respectively. This expenditure is explicitly
intended to influence policy and legislation. So, what’s that about
Russia allegedly swaying the presidential election with a fraction of
the financial muscle? Despite
the irrational focus on Russian meddling, internet companies like
Facebook have become willing participants in the official efforts to
clamp down on this illusory “enemy of democracy.” What’s
more is the complete oversight on how the US media environment is
increasingly dominated and controlled by vested powerful corporate
interests.

While
the mainstream media and politicians fret over alleged Russian
influence on American citizens, there is an absurd absence in the public
debate about the disproportionate power of just six US media
conglomerates dominating all major American news services. Social
media and internet companies are vying with the traditional news
channels. In a recent article, New York Times technology columnist
Farhad Manjoo wrote
about the “Frightful Five” – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and
Alphabet (Google). He writes: “The Five elicit worries of total social
control.” The
influence these US-owned media giants exert cuts across all cultural
sectors, from the news received, to books, film and other entertainment.
In effect, these companies are molding citizens into the consumers that
they want to maximize their profits.Facebook’s
reported plans to employ US government-validated people who can use
their intelligence contacts and prejudices to control what millions of
ordinary people will read, watch or listen to is another manifestation
of the larger drift into a corporate matrix. Under
the preposterous guise of “protecting” from “fake news” and “foreign
meddling in elections,” Facebook is turning into a government censor. This
disturbing trend has accelerated over the last year. Far from Russia or
some other foreign impostor tampering with freedom of information and
free speech – supposed bedrocks of democracy – it is increasingly
American companies that are the very real and formidable constraint. Robert
Bridge, a fellow Op-Edge contributor, said Facebook appears to be
deliberately blocking links disseminating particular news stories
carried by the channel. Bridge
concurs with the experience of many other ordinary people around the
world who also have noticed how US internet companies have substantially
curbed the search freedom previously enjoyed on the internet.“It's
really incredible how Google and YouTube have earnestly started
manipulating their algorithms and censoring news, ” says Bridge. “I was
researching a story recently, and it was so difficult to pull up any
relevant information that was not critical of Putin or Russia.”A similar finding was reported
by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), which carried out a study on
how search traffic to that site and other left-wing, anti-war online
journals has plummeted by over 50 percent since Google announced new
search engines to curtail “fake news” back in April. Facebook
and the other big US internet companies are instead directing users to
what they call “authoritative” news organizations, which by and large
are corporate-controlled entities aligned with government interests.
Ironically, these news outlets have peddled some of the biggest fake
news stories, such as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq which launched a decade-long US war killing over a million Iraqis. “Russia-gate” is another fabricated narrative which is being used to crush critical alternative sources. The
infernal paradox is that genuinely alternative, critical news sources
are now at risk of being censored by internet companies working in
league with nefarious US government intelligence.

Popular opposition to the Obama administration’s drive to war against
Syria is mounting, with a recent Pew Research poll showing only 29
percent of Americans favoring air strikes “in response to reports that
the Syrian government used chemical weapons.” This figure would be even
smaller if the government’s unsubstantiated claims of chemical weapons
use by the Bashar al-Assad regime were not taken as the starting point.The outrage felt by millions in the US and internationally over the
prospect of dragging the American people into another war of aggression
has been met by a mounting drumbeat for war by the Obama administration,
accompanied by a non-stop media barrage of pro-war propaganda and lies.Nowhere is this propaganda more crude than on US network and cable
television. For the talking heads, former government officials, retired
military officers and other hacks who populate these TV newsrooms, no
lie is too big, whether told with a straight face or a smirk. Not since
the Nazis has a war propaganda machine been ramped up to such heights of
intensity and depths of dishonesty.Having spent much of the previous week flicking through the news
channels, this reporter can relay to the reader only a fraction of the
misinformation that is presented as “fact” on US television. If one
over-arching characteristic of this coverage is to be singled out, it is
the degree to which the media uncritically accepts the government lies
used to fan the flames of war—lies that the media personalities
dutifully seek to shove down the throats of an increasingly distrustful
public.Chief among these lies is the Obama administration’s unsubstantiated
claim that the Assad regime has “gassed its own people,” accompanied by
footage of dead children, which, we are at times reminded, “cannot be
independently verified.” Reports that the US-backed “rebel” forces may
be responsible are dismissed out of hand. TV correspondents, who pass
over in silence US war crimes and the mass repression carried out by
Washington’s Middle East allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt) join in
with the government’s professed moral outrage over the alleged
atrocities committed by the “enemy.”Last Tuesday afternoon (September 3), CNN’s chief international
correspondent Christiane Amanpour attacked Bashar Jaafari, Syrian United
Nations ambassador, during an interview. “Nobody believes what your
regime has said over the last two-and-a-half years,” she declared,
“because everything has been swatted away by the facts. You’ve simply
escalated the war using conventional and now unconventional weapons.”She continued her rant: “How do you sleep at night, Mr. Jaafari,
defending a government that is responsible for so much bloodshed, and
has really crossed the line from any kind of civil war into weapons of
mass destruction? The greatest crime under international law?”The media trundles out various military “experts” with advice on the
best weapons and strategies to be employed in the US government’s
military pursuits. Later in the afternoon last Tuesday, CNN reporter Tom
Foreman joined Lt. Col. Rick Francona atop a giant map of Syria to
discuss options for an effective “limited” military action against
Syria.

Foreman: This notion of Senator [John] McCain’s that attacking the air assets of Syria could really make a difference.Francona: Although they have 20 airfields, these six air bases
constitute the bulk of the combat power of the Syrian air force. You
want to go after things that would make a difference. You want to go
after the fuel supplies and the fueling points. You also want to hit
their maintenance points; limit their ability to generate sorties. You
also want to go after any command control resident on the base. And of
course, if you can, take out their runways.Foreman: This sort of attack would allow the White House to say, yes,
it punished the chemical weapons capability in a limited way. It would
allow opponents of it to say at least it was a limited attack on truly
military targets. And it would allow people like John McCain to say,
yes, it was a diminishing of the basic capacity of the Assad government.
(Addressing anchor Wolf Blitzer), Whether it will overcome the public’s
doubts, Wolf, we’ll have to see.

One of the more despicable media practices is to exploit the
conditions of the Syrian refugees to boost the war drive. The
devastation of Syria, which is forcing thousands of people to flee the
country on a daily basis, is the responsibility of the imperialist
powers that have plunged the country into sectarian warfare. But the
media obscenely twists this reality to obtain isolated sound bites from
desperate refugees calling for a US intervention that would rain bombs
on Syria and increase the misery of the civilian population.On Tuesday evening’s “NBC Nightly News,” NBC chief foreign
correspondent Richard Engel reported from Turkey, not far from the CIA
station that coordinates the flow of billions of dollars in money and
arms provided by Qatar and Saudi Arabia to fuel the slaughter across the
Syrian border. Engel interviewed a 17-year-old girl, a refugee from Syria who hadn’t
been to school in a year. “We are waiting for help from the United
States,” she said, “from any country.”Engel then spoke with refugee Abdullah Hamadi, a cotton farmer who is
now homeless. “We want America to attack,” Abdullah said. “Today, not
tomorrow.” He spoke of his three-year-old daughter, suffering from
dysentery. “Nobody is helping. We have no hope left, but for America.” Engel ended his segment, telling NBC Anchor Brian Williams: “These
people are putting so much hope in the United States, not because it is
the country that can help, but they see Russia against them, the Syrian
government bombing them and Europe and the Arab world just talking.”The taking heads also interview the war criminals of present and past
administrations, seeking their insight into diplomatic and military
policy and promoting their books and other endeavors. These individuals
are presented as reasonable and legitimate sources of the truth, as TV
anchors engage in repartee over the plusses and minuses of military
engagement. On Thursday morning’s “Today Show” on NBC, co-host Savannah Guthrie
interviewed Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary in both the George W.
Bush and Gerald Ford administrations, and one of the chief architects of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Guthrie: You had some tough words for President Obama at an event
yesterday. You said this plan for sort of a shot across the bow, limited
strikes, would be ineffective and an embarrassment for the United
States. My question to you is, would it be better to do something
limited or do nothing at all?Rumsfeld: Well, it seems to me that’s a false choice. I think either
you do something that’s worth doing or you do nothing at all. The danger
of doing something that’s not worth anything, that results in nothing,
that leaves Assad standing, it seems to me, is that it makes the United
States look like that’s what we prefer…Guthrie: Do you think it was a mistake for the president to consult Congress? Do you think it gave Assad the gift of time?

Rumsfeld: Oh, I think that if he gets support of Congress that’s
probably a useful thing. On the other hand, he did not need to go to
Congress. President after president has recognized that the authorities
they have as commander-in-chief enable them to use force, within reason,
and then at some point go to the Congress. More often than not, the various television presenters do not even
make a pretense of being objective, and cannot restrain themselves from
expressing their ignorant, anti-democratic views. The following exchange
took place last Wednesday morning between CNN’s Carol Costello and Rep.
Matt Salmon, Republican of Arizona, who is planning to vote against
authorization for a Syrian strike.

Costello: The president said there’s no immediate threat to the
United States, but if you let people like Assad get away with this kind
of thing, in the future what’s to stop Assad and other dictators who
have chemical weapons from unleashing them on the United States? What
could convince you to open your mind to the thought of a military strike
against Syria?Salmon: It’s going to be very difficult to convince me that this is one that the United States should be involved in.Costello: What if the president goes ahead with a military strike no
matter what Congress does… Sometimes we have to disregard public opinion
and do what’s right for the country.

Another role of the television news personalities is to advise Obama
on the best way to sell the war against Syria to the American people.
Several days ago, the call went out from various news sources for the
president to “take it to the American people” in a prime time television
address. On Friday morning’s “Today Show,” co-anchor Willie Geist spoke with
David Gregory, moderator of the “Meet the Press” Sunday talk show. Geist asked, “How can [Obama] change the opinions of Americans? Does
he have to do an Oval Office address, as some have reported he might
consider?”Gregory responded, “Yes, and Secretary of State John Kerry has said
that he will address the American people in a few days. So I think the
White House has had to shift their strategy here. Nothing to announce
officially, but clearly they’ve got to make the case. The president has
been told internally by advisers and by outside advisers that he’s got
to take the public to school a little bit here—explain what’s at stake
in Syria and make a broader case.“Initially, they wanted to do this quickly. They wanted to not make
as big of a deal out of this. They didn’t want to raise the specter that
they were going to war like the United States was in Iraq. I think he’s
got to shift gears here and really make the case that this is do or die
here for the United States, that there is something really serious at
risk.”Gregory added, “The irony, Willie, is that the president has created a
situation where you have to ask, how does he not strike Syria—making
comparisons to Adolf Hitler, talking about US credibility on the
line—even if Congress doesn’t give him the authority.” Gregory’s reference to Adolf Hitler was not in relation to the war
policy of the Obama administration, but rather to Assad. And he
suggested that the president should proceed with an illegal attack on
Syria, in contravention of international law, with or without the
authorization of Congress.

In an apparent attempt to bolster the Syrian government’s claim
that this week’s protests were the result of a foreign plot, Syrian
state television has broadcast what it called a “confession” by an
Egyptian-American who was detained in Damascus on Friday. The official
Syrian state news agency reported
that Muhammed Radwan, an Egyptian-America engineer who has worked in
Syria for about a year, “said that he visited Israel in secret and
confessed to receiving money from abroad in exchange for sending photos
and videos about Syria.” The report also claimed that “a
Spanish-speaking person from Columbia” had contacted Mr. Radwan “because
he lived in Syria and carries a camera-equipped mobile phone” and
offered to pay him 100 Egyptian pounds (about $16) in return for
photographs and video. One of Mr. Radwan’s cousins in Egypt, Nora
Shalaby, told The Lede by e-mail on Saturday that the Syrian report is
“all lies. He has never been to Israel, and he does not speak
Spanish.” Ms. Shalaby added that Mr. Radwan, who was educated in the
United States and took part in protests in Cairo last month, posted an
update on his @battutta Twitter feed from his phone on Friday suggesting that he was observing a protest at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. As The Lede reported on Friday,
another American, Tik Root, a college student from Vermont studying
Arabic in Damascus, was arrested by the Syrian government during a
previous protest on March 18 in the Umayyad Mosque. The State Department
told The Associated Press
on Saturday that it was looking into the reported arrests. In recent
weeks, Mr. Radwan had posted a small number of updates on Twitter about
the growing unrest in Syria.

On the bloodiest day of Syria’s uprising, Rami Nakhle’s fingers drifted over the keyboard in a room silent but for the news bulletins of Al Jazeera,
yet filled with the commotion on his computer screen. As the events
unfolded Friday, user names flashed and faded. Twitter flickered with
agitprop and trash talk. And Facebook glided past Gmail and Skype as
Mr. Nakhle joined a coterie of exiled Syrians fomenting, reporting and,
most remarkably, shaping the greatest challenge to four decades of
the Assad family’s rule in Syria. “Can you hear it?” Mr. Nakhle cried,
showing a video of chants for the government’s fall. “This is Syria,
man! Unbelievable.”

Unlike
the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and even Libya, which were televised to
the world, Syria’s revolt is distinguished by the power of a
self-styled vanguard abroad to ferry out images and news that are
anarchic and illuminating, if incomplete. For weeks now, the small
number of activists, spanning the Middle East, Europe and the United
States, have coordinated across almost every time zone and managed to
smuggle hundreds of satellite and mobile phones, modems, laptops and
cameras into Syria. There, compatriots elude surveillance with e-mailed
software and upload videos on dial-up connections. Their work has
ensured what was once impossible.

In
1982, Syria’s government managed to hide, for a time, its massacre of
at least 10,000 people in Hama in a brutal crackdown of an Islamist
revolt. But Saturday, the world could witness, in almost real time, the
chants of anger and cries for the fallen as security forces fired on
the funerals for Friday’s dead. The activists have staggered the
government of President Bashar al-Assad,
forcing it to face the reality that it has almost entirely ceded the
narrative of the revolt to its opponents at home and abroad. “The
government’s paranoid style has become obvious,” said Joshua Landis, a
professor of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma. “These
activists have completely flipped the balance of power on the regime,
and that’s all due to social media.”

Still,
though few question the breadth of the uprising, there are
differences on its depth in towns and cities. Cyberactivists outside of
Syria fashion slogans of unity for a revolt that the government
insists is inspired by militant Islamists. The voices of protesters
smuggled abroad have drowned out the sentiments of the president’s
supporters, who include the prosperous elite and frightened minorities
of Christians and heterodox Muslim sects.

Mr.
Nakhle, 28, finds himself in an unlikely locale to wage that contest.
Imbued with youthful idealism, he left his hometown in 2006 for
Damascus, where he discovered the Internet. “A completely new world for
me,” he called it, and he soon broadened his activism with Internet
campaigns to free political prisoners and, more dramatically, end
Syria’s equivalent of martial law. He came up with a pseudonym, Malath
Aumran — an inside joke based on family nicknames — and came up with a
portrait for Twitter and Facebook that was a composite photograph of
32 men.

By
last December, the secret police were pursuing him. “That’s all they
need — suspicions,” he said. In a harrowing journey the next month,
smugglers on motorcycles carried him to the border, where he narrowly
escaped the police and spent the night in a rocky valley before making
his way to a working-class neighborhood here. Frills are few; in a
sparse apartment, cigarettes, tea, Nescafé, sugar and a drink from
boiled leaves of yerba maté crowd his coffee table. “I’m a
cyberactivist,” he said. “As long as I have the Internet, that’s it.”

Gaunt
and with bloodshot blue-green eyes, Mr. Nakhle navigated a cascade of
information Friday — a frenetic conversation on Skype with 15 people
in Syria, a snippet of video from Tartus, a phone call from a friend in
Damascus, and queries from journalists for contacts in remote towns.
Someone he believed to be a secret police officer flashed him a
taunting message: “There is news that a member of your family has been
taken by security services.” Mr. Nakhle changed the sim card on his
phone and called home, without taking his eyes off his computer
screen. The news proved false. A message came in via Skype that a
protest was dispersed in Aleppo. “I won’t publish this one,” he said
knowingly.

Mr.
Nakhle is part of a network that literally spans the globe, whose
members include a Syrian-American woman in Chicago who said she grew
tired of simply watching Al Jazeera and Ausama Monajed, a Damascus-born
activist in London who drives with his Internet-enabled laptop open in
the passenger seat, running speech-to-text software. Mr. Monajed
estimates that 18 to 20 people are engaged in helping coordinate and
cover the protests full time, though he boasts that he can find someone
in his broader community to translate English to French at 4 a.m. He
has a contact in every Syrian province, who in turn have their
networks of 10 people. “And the regime can’t do anything about it,” he
said.

Several
say they relied on Syrian businessmen — abroad or in Syria — to
finance one of their most impressive feats. After witnessing the
Egyptian government’s success in shutting down the Internet and mobile
phone networks in January, they made a concerted attempt to circumvent a
similar move by delivering satellite phones and modems across Syria.
Ammar Abdulhamid, an activist in Maryland, estimated that they
delivered 100 satellite phones, along with hundreds of cameras and
laptops.

The
impromptu network has been allowed to guide events against a
government that hews to the Soviet-era notion of Information Ministries
and communiqués. A Facebook page called Syria Revolution, administered
from abroad, has become the pulpit for the revolt — its statements de
facto policy of the uprising. Mr. Nakhle said he had urged people to
use slogans that are free of the sectarian or religious bent popular
with Islamic activists. “We have to worry about these people,” he
admitted.

The
unprecedented power of the long-distance activists to shape the
message troubled Camille Otrakji, a Damascus-born political blogger who
lives in Montreal. Where others see coordination, he sees
manipulation, arguing that the activists’ mastery of image belies a
revolt more sectarian than national, and deaf to the fears of
minorities. “I call it deception,” said Mr. Otrakji, a somewhat lonely
voice in the Internet tumult. “It’s like putting something on the
wrapping of a product which has nothing to do with what’s inside. This
is all being manipulated.”

Katherine Zoepf contributed reporting from New York, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

A
presidential decree on Thursday ending emergency rule will "change
nothing" in Syria, prominent cyber activist Malath Omran said, insisting
the people want the fall of the regime."Lifting
emergency rule will change nothing because the security services are
not bound by any law," Omran told AFP in a telephone interview from
Beirut. "The Syrian people has no faith whatsoever in the regime," said
Omran, who under the Internet identity of Rami Nakhleh has been a key
player behind the unprecedented protests which have shaken Syria
since March 15.

Omran,
28, fled to Lebanon a few months ago, after learning that orders for
his arrest had been issued by the Syrian security services which had
questioned him on several occasions over his Internet activities.
"From the first day people took to the streets with one goal in mind,
the fall of the regime... but because there were few protesters at
first they were afraid of announcing it openly," he told AFP. "But as
the numbers grew the fear factor was broken and the fall of the regime
became the slogan and the demand" of demonstrators, according to the
activist. His comments came just hours after Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad signed decrees ending nearly five decades of emergency law,
abolishing state security courts and allowing citizens to hold
peaceful demonstrations.

The
moves are aimed at placating more than a month of unprecedented
protests across Syria. Amnesty International says about 220 people have
been killed in a crackdown on the protests, which first broke out in
the capital on March 15. But for Omran, 28, who has more than 2,800
friends on the social network Facebook and more than 3,000 followers on
Twitter, Assad's decrees and the unveiling of a new government tasked
with promoting reforms are "useless." "How will the new government be
of any use, when we all know that governments in Syria only implement
the orders of the intelligence services?" he asked.

Omran,
who studied political sciences at Damascus University, said the
intelligence services had linked him to his cyber identity of Rami
Nakhleh after he was interviewed by phone on an Arab television. "They
discovered that I (Omran) am Rami Nakhleh and they threatened to arrest
my sister (in Syria) if I don't pull out of the revolution," the
activist said. Two prominent human rights activists said earlier in
Damascus that Assad's decrees were good steps forward but did not go
far enough.

Recent
protests in Iran have failed to gain traction -- despite growing
demonstrations in neighboring countries and Iran's own 2009 massive
protest movement. What's the status of the Iranian opposition movement,
what challenges does it face and could a regime change ever happen
peacefully? A blogger from Iran weighs in. Peyman Bagheri is a blogger
whose articles against the Iranian government have prompted him to
flee his native land for fear of being arrested and imprisoned. He
recently spoke via phone from Europe with CNN's Asieh Namdar.

Are
you surprised the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt failed to
galvanize Iranian activists to take to the streets on levels similar
to what we saw in 2009? What's the status of the opposition movement
in Iran?

The
bitter reality is Iranians are more worried about the economy, jobs
and putting food on the table for their families. The economy is in
shambles. It's difficult for Iranians to think about protesting and
putting their lives at risk, when they are just trying to survive. Many
are barely making it. Simply put, the events seen around the world are
taking a back burner to real issues at home. The opposition movement
is alive but underground. People are afraid of violence, of getting
thrown in jail. Activists are spreading their messages through social
networks. Lately, they've started writing anti-government slogans on
the walls. So to answer your question, the opposition movement is
there, just not visible to your eyes.

What's the biggest problem with Iran's opposition movement?

The
biggest problem is that there is no clear leader who can unite and
please everyone. Even among activists, there's no consensus on how to
move forward. No unity, no organization. But the movement has been
successful in some ways. The regime has weakened, and facing political,
social and economic crisis. I think it's just a matter of time that
this regime will collapse.

Nobody
knows for sure. Right now it's going downhill. Internally, there's a
lot of division and infighting among high-ranking leaders. The system
is starting to fall apart from within. In my opinion, when it happens,
regime change in Iran will not happen peacefully. In most cases,
autocratic regimes and dictators can't share power with anyone. They are
paranoid, and paranoia leads to more repression.

Why did you flee from Iran this year?

I've
written more than 50 articles against the government in the past two
years. Somebody didn't like my blogs. I was threatened on the phone.
The person who called said he'd report me to the government if I
continued my writing. I don't know who it was. My home was under
surveillance, I felt I was a target. I said to myself, "It's time to
go."

Tell us about the open letter you wrote on one of your blogs to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It
was one of the most visited blog posts I've ever written. I
questioned the legitimacy of his leadership, and the human rights
abuses. I asked him "what kind of leader are you?" I wrote about how,
while he might be able to rule with terror and fear, that won't last
forever because he doesn't have people's hearts on his side.

Do you know any bloggers who are in jail now?

I
know of two. [One] was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2009.
[Another] vanished a month ago; no one has heard of him. He's probably
in jail. Bloggers, if caught, normally get up to 20 years. Between 60
and 70 bloggers are currently in jail awaiting trials.

Iranian media covered events in Egypt with praise -- but no mention of the protests in Syria why?

Iran
and Syria are powerful allies. Iran will not condemn the crackdown,
and in this case even acknowledge them. The two countries have deep
roots, are very close. You won't find news about Syria on state-run TV,
since it's all filtered. Egypt had very close ties with the U.S. so
no surprise for Iran to call government critics and protesters there
"heroes."

What needs to happen for us to see a peaceful change towards secular democracy in Iran?

In
my opinion, change in Iran can't happen peacefully. Dictators fight
till the end. The only peaceful option is reform within the system. But
real reform could mean the beginning of the end for this regime. This
is why the government can't accept any kind of genuine reform. It
would open the door to bigger things, maybe another revolt.

Do you want to return to Iran someday?

Yes,
but not now. They'll arrest and throw me in jail. The regime is
threatened by bloggers like me, who're spreading the message through
words and blogs. They are afraid of their intellectual influence on
people. They see us as a huge threat. ... As long as this government is
in power, I will not see my homeland. I should add four of my blogs
are completely shutdown --- I can't access any of them. For the
government, this is absolute proof of my guilt.

In one sentence, can you give us a glimpse of life in Iran for the younger generation?

Friday
evening, Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali boarded a jet for
Malta, leaving his prime minister to face streets filled with
protesters demanding a change of government in the North African
country. The protests began weeks earlier in the central city of Sidi
Bouzid, sparked by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed
university graduate whose informal vegetable stall was shuttered by the
police. His despair exemplified the frustration that many Tunisians
felt with their contracting economy, high levels of unemployment and
inequality, censored media and Internet, and widespread corruption.
Protests spread from city to city, with trade unions, lawyers, and
countless unemployed Tunisian youth demanding a change to an economic
system that appeared to benefit a small number of families close to
power and leave ordinary citizens behind.

As
the protests intensified, Ben Ali offered concessions to his people:
23 years into his reign, he agreed to step down in 2014. He ordered the
security police to stop using live ammunition on protesters after
nearly 70 had been killed,
cut the price of basic foodstuffs, and promised to allow a freer media
and end Internet censorship. This morning, as pressures increased, he
offered new elections within six months. But all that failed to placate
the crowds, who finally got what they wanted later in the day: a
Tunisia sans Ben Ali.

While
the future of Tunisia's governance is extremely uncertain at present,
it seems we've witnessed the rarest of phenomena, a popular revolt
toppling an Arab dictator. Audiences in the Arab world have been glued
to Al Jazeera, which has covered the protests closely. Many states in
the region suffer from the same problems -- unemployment, slow growth,
corrupt government, aging dictators -- that brought Tunisians into the
streets. Protesters have taken to the streets in Algeria and Jordan,
demanding jobs and affordable food. Whether these protests erupt into
the revolution Tunisia is experiencing is impossible to know. What's
clear is that the actions taken by Tunisians are reverberating around
the region.

Outside
the Middle East and the Francophone media sphere, the events in
Tunisia have gotten little attention, certainly not the breathless,
24-hour coverage devoted to 2009's Iranian election protests. When the
protests began in Sidi Bouzid, much of the English-speaking world was
focused on the Christmas and New Year's holidays. As protests in Tunis
heated up, U.S. eyeballs were focused on the tragic shooting in Tucson,
Arizona. Had the Tunisian protests hit during a slow news month, it's
still unlikely they would have been followed as closely as events in
Iran, which is larger, of greater international security concern, and
has a large, media-savvy diaspora who helped promote the 2009 protests
to an international audience.

Iran's
diaspora was especially effective at promoting the Green Movement to
an online audience that followed tweets, Facebook posts, and web videos
avidly, hungry for news from the front lines of the struggle. Tens of
thousands of Twitter users turned their profile pictures green in
solidarity with the activists, and hundreds set up proxy servers to
help Iranians evade Internet filters. For users of social media, the
protests in Iran were an inescapable, global story. Tunisia, by
contrast, hasn't seen nearly the attention or support from the online
community.

The
irony is that social media likely played a significant role in the
events that have unfolded in the past month in Tunisia, and that the
revolution appears far more likely to lead to lasting political change.
Ben Ali's government tightly controlled all forms of media, on and
offline. Reporters were prevented from traveling to cover protests in
Sidi Bouzid, and the reports from official media characterized events as
either vandalism or terrorism. Tunisians got an alternative picture
from Facebook, which remained uncensored through the protests, and they
communicated events to the rest of the world by posting videos to
YouTube and Dailymotion. As unrest spread from Sidi Bouzid to Sfax, from
Hammamet and ultimately to Tunis, Tunisians documented events on
Facebook. As others followed their updates, it's likely that news of
demonstrations in other parts of the country disseminated online helped
others conclude that it was time to take to the streets. And the videos
and accounts published to social media sites offered an ongoing
picture of the protests to those around the world savvy enough to be
paying attention.

One way to understand the significance of social media in Tunisia
is to examine the government's attempts to control and silence it.
Tunisia has aggressively censored the Internet since 2005, blocking not
just explicitly political sites, but social media sites like
video-sharing service Dailymotion. Video-sharing sites were a special
target of government censors because Tunisian activists are extremely
tech-savvy and had released provocative videos online, including one
that documented the first lady's frequent shopping trips to Europe using the presidential jet.

Not
content just to filter content, last summer Tunisian authorities began
"phishing" attacks on activists' Gmail and Facebook accounts. By
injecting malicious computer code into the login page of those services
through the government-controlled Internet service provider, Ben Ali's
monitors were able to obtain passwords to these accounts, locking out
the activists and harvesting email lists of presumed activists. When the
riots intensified last week, the government began arresting prominent
Internet activists, including my Global Voices colleague Slim Amamou,
who had broken the story of the government's password phishing. (Amamou
was released, apparently unharmed, Thursday night.)

But
if the web was such a threat to the government's authority, why did
the regime not block Facebook or shut down the Internet entirely? It's
critical to understand that Ben Ali was, first and foremost, a
pragmatist. As late as Friday morning, he was looking for a solution
that would allow him to remain in power, offering concessions in the
hope of placating protesters. Internet censorship was already one of the
grievances protesters had aired -- when Ben Ali offered concessions to
protesters Thursday, loosening the reins was one of the promises that
were warmly, if skeptically received.

Pundits will likely start celebrating a "Twitter revolution" in Tunisia, even if they missed watching it unfold; the Atlantic's
Andrew Sullivan already revived the dreaded phrase Thursday. Others
are seeking connections between unfolding events and a WikiLeaks cable
that showed U.S. diplomats' frustration with Ben Ali, and with
denial-of-service attacks by online activist group Anonymous, which has
been targeting entities that have tried to stop the dissemination of
WikiLeaks cables, like the Tunisian government. But any attempt to
credit a massive political shift to a single factor -- technological,
economic, or otherwise -- is simply untrue. Tunisians took to the
streets due to decades of frustration, not in reaction to a WikiLeaks
cable, a denial-of-service attack, or a Facebook update.

Shortly after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power on Friday, activist Wael Ghonim
spoke with CNN's Wolf Blitzer and credited Facebook with the success
of the Egyptian people's uprising. Ghonim, a marketing manager for
Google, played a key role in organizing the January 25 protest by reaching out to Egyptian youths on Facebook. Shortly after that first protest, Ghonim was arrested in Cairo and imprisoned for 12 days.
Since his release, Ghonim has become a symbol for the Egyptian
movement, although he has rejected this notion. "I'm not a hero. I was
writing on a keyboard on the Internet and I wasn't exposing my life to
danger," he said in an interview
immediately after his release. "The heroes are the one who are in the
street." On Friday, Ghonim told CNN that Facebook and the Internet were
responsible for the uprising in Egypt. From the interview:

I
want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him [...] I'm talking
on behalf of Egypt. [...] This revolution started online. This
revolution started on Facebook. This revolution started [...] in June
2010 when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians started collaborating
content. We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by
60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I've always said that
if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet. [...]

Listen
to the rest of the interview (below), which is played over video of
rejoicing in Tahrir Square. For the latest updates from Egypt, visit
our live blog. WATCH: [via All Facebook]

Media Lies Used to Provide a Pretext for Another “Humanitarian War”: Protest in Syria: Who Counts the Dead?

According to numerous reports from the Western media, human rights
organisations, as well as the UN, countless peaceful civilians have been
killed by the Syrian forces since the beginning of the unrest in the
country in mid March. But where do the numbers come from? Many media reports on the alleged deadly repression by the Syrian
government fail to mention the sources of their information, which are
very often referred to solely as “human rights groups” or “activists”:

“Rights groupssaid Sunday that troops cracking down on pro-democracy protesters killed eight people in northern Idlib province and four more in central areas near Hama. (Syrian Forces Kill 12 as ICRC Head Visits Damascus, Voice of America, September 4, 2011.)

These protests are an unprecedented challenge to President Bashar
al-Assad — and his family, which has ruled the country for more than 40
years. The cost has been high: at least 200 dead, according to human rights groups, and many cyber activists have been jailed. (Deborah Amos, Syrian Activist In Hiding Presses Mission From Abroad, NPR, April 22, 2011.)

At least 75 people have been killed today in Syria during mass protests, local human rights activists told Amnesty International […]

Although the necessity to remain “anonymous” where dissent is said to
be life threatening may under certain circumnstances be understandable,
this stance inevitably raises suspicions: The “‘numbers” can be used to
demonize the government, as part of covert operations by any state or
organisation looking for regime change in Damascus. It is no secret that
the overthrow of the Syrian regime has been a long-sought goal
by several foreign powers, including the U.S. and Israel.The reliance of the mainstream media on information emanating from
anonymous groups provides a biased understanding of the Syrian protests,
which in turn supports the broader objective of destabilizing the
Syrian regime.

When information from unknown sources pertaining to the death toll is
published either by a mainstream media or a recognized human rights
group, it is invariably picked up and considered as “factual evidence”
by other news sources or think tanks, without further verification.
Moreover, in the process the information is subject to further
distortion. Here is an example of this phenomenon:

Rights group Amnesty International said on Friday that it has recorded the names of 171 people killed since the first protesters died in Daraa on March 18.The group based its tally on information received from rights
activists, lawyers and other sources and said the majority appeared to
have been killed by live ammunition fired by the security forces. (Protesters killed in southern Syria, Al Jazeera, April 9, 2011.)The above news article is based on the following statement by Amnesty International:

At least 171 people are believed to have been killed during three weeks of unrest in Syria, Amnesty International said today after at least eight more fatalities during protests.The death toll from today’s clashes could rise significantly, according to reports from human rights activists in the country.Amnesty International has recorded the names, via information received from sources including human rights activists and lawyers, of 171 people killed. (Death toll rises amid fresh Syrian protests, Amnesty International, April 8, 2011.)

The original information from Amnesty international (AI) is that “171
people are believed to have been killed”, a statement showing that
although “it has recorded the names of 171 people killed”, this
information could not be confirmed. Al Jazeera fails to report this
“uncertainty” and by doing so makes it a fact rather than an assumption,
that 171 people were killed.Here is another example of blatant distortion:

Despite a pledge to end its crackdown, Syrian security forces continued to suppress anti-regime protestors, killing at least eighteen on Thursday in the city of Homs (al-Jazeera). (Jonathan Masters, Assad’s Broken Promises, Council on Foreign Relations, November 3, 2011.)This is an analysis from the Council on Foreign Relations, the famous
and extremely powerful U.S. foreign policy think tank. It is based on
the following article from Al Jazeera where the information related to
the killing is markedly different:

“Dozens of people have reportedly been killed in the flashpoint city of Homs, as Syrian security forces bombarded residential areas with tanks.

The reported deaths occurred in the Bab Amro district of Homs on Thursday, the LocalCoordination Committees of Syria, an activist group monitoring the country’s uprising, said. (Syria “violence defies peace deal”,” Al Jazeera, November 4, 2011.)

Al Jazeera’s wording “reportedly been killed” and “reported deaths”
shows the deaths have not been confirmed. The Qatari media also mentions
that these claims come from one source only, namely from an activist
group called Local Coordination Committees of Syria (LCC). The article
from the CFR changed Al Jazeera’s allegations into concrete facts.When it comes to counting the dead, the LCC is very often cited in
the mainstream media as a source for reports on killings committed by
the Syrian authorities, as we can see in the examples below:

Another opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees, said it could not corroborate the Syrian Observatory’s account of the military casualties, though it also called Monday one of the uprising’s bloodier days, with at least 51 civilians killed.
“We don’t have any confirmation of what they’re claiming,” said Omar
Idlibi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees. (Nada Bakri
and Rick Gladstone, Syria Faces New Threats as Opposition Seeks Allies, The New York Times, November 15, 2011.)

According to the opposition network, the Local Coordination
Committees, at least five people were killed during the military
offensives — three in the central province of Homs, one in the
eastern border town of Tal Kalakh and one in Idleb along the
Syrian-Turkish border. (Roula Hajjar, Syria: Activists report manhunt for defectors and protesters, Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2011.)

Secret police opened fire and shot teargas to disperse more than 10,000 protesters in Deir Ezzour, in Syria’s tribal east, an activist from the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union (SRCU) told Al Jazeera. Ten protesters were wounded and around 40 were arrested, he said.The SRCU is the name given this week to one of Syria’s grassroots opposition networks. The SRCU works alongside the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC), another grassroots opposition network. (Al Jazeera Live Blog – Syria, June 3, 2011.)

At least 2,200 people have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the unrest, by the United Nations’ count. An activist group, the Syrian Revolution Coordinating Union, said on Tuesday that 551 people were killed during Ramadan alone. The group said 130 others were killed on July 31, the eve of Ramadan, in an attack on the city of Hama, which was also the scene of a ferocious crackdown in 1982.On Tuesday, four people were killed in Hara and two others in Inkil, two towns in Dara’a Province, according to the Local Coordination Committees, another group of activists who document demonstrations. (Nada Bakri, Syrian Security Forces Fire on Worshipers as Ramadan Ends, The New York Times, August 30, 2011.)

The above article mentions a “UN count” as if it were an independent
source of information. However, according to one of its reports, the UN
also relies on the same sources of information, the LCC, and it mentions
in a note that it is unable to confirm if the information given by the
LCC is true:

“At the time of writing, the mission had received more than 1,900 names and details of persons killed in the SyrianArabRepublic since mid-March 2011; all are said to be civilians [26]

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the LCC
is part of the non-elected Syrian National Council (SNC). Even though
most of its members are in exile and its members in Syria are unknown,
the SNC is presented as the legitimate Syrian authority, and has been
recognized by the National Transitional Council of Libya, another
non-elected body recognized by Western powers as a “pro-democracy”
representative of the Libyan people.

The LCC are somewhat “anonymous”. They refused a telephone interview,
but agreed to answer some questions by email. They stated that for
security reasons they could not reveal how many members the LCC
includes, but claim 13 members of the LCC are in the SNC. “We have
enough people to run demonstrations on ground, for media and relief
action.”The members allegedly come from different backgrounds and are from
all age groups; some are active inside Syria, the others outside the
country. The LCC says that their members, in and outside Syria, have
been threatened, arrested and tortured by the Syrian authorities. When
asked how they became a source of information for the foreign media, the
LCC says it is because they provide credible facts.

And what is the ultimate goal of the LCC? “Our goal is to change the regime in Syria, and as the first step, to end the mandate of the current President, who is now politically and legally responsible for the crimes committed by his regime against the Syrian people and a safe transfer of power in the country.”

Basically, the LCC wants regime change in Syria and it seems to be
the major source of information for the western mainstream media and
human rights organizations. This opposition group claims to provide
“credible facts”, however there is no way to verify these facts. The
so-called facts could well be propaganda intended to discredit the
actual regime and galvanize public opinion in favour of the regime
change the group aspires to implement.Although the LCC spokesperson refused to disclose the names of its
members, some have appeared in the mainstream media. One of their
members, or collaborator, is Rami Nakhle, a cyberactivist living in
exile in Beirut, Lebanon.

“Today, after 98 days of protests, he is living in denial,” says Rami Nakhle, a Syrian working in Beirut with the Local Coordination Committees, a clearinghouse for Syrian opposition protests and activities “It
has become clear to everybody that Bashar al-Assad cannot change. He
doesn’t realize that Syria has changed forever but he’s still the same
president we heard last time, in April.” (Nicholas Blanford, Assad’s speech may buy time, but not survival, The Christian Science Monitor, June 20, 2011)

The activist has a privileged relationship with Al Jazeera, according to NPR:

It should be noted that Al Jazeera played a key role in promoting the regime change in Libya. CyberDissidents.org, a website presented by the Bush Center
as a “Voice of Freedom Online”, offers a brief portrait of Nakhle,
which is not unlike the other portraits found in the mainstream press,
which describe him solely as a cyber-dissident, as if he never had any
other occupation:

“Rami Nakhle is a 27 year cyber-dissident. His use of social media to
spread information about the Syrian Revolution caught the attention of
Syrian authorities, causing him to flee to Lebanon in January 2011. For
the past three years, he has been working under the pseudonym Malath
Aumran. Although the Syrian secret police have discovered his real
identity, he continues to use this pseudonym to retain recognition from
his online followers.

Despite these threats from the Syrian government, Nakhle continues to
work in hiding, continuing his campaign for freedom through Facebook,
Twitter, and full-access interviews with prominent news sources like BBC
and The New York Times. (CyberDissident Database)

The U.S. government and NGOs doing CIA work, such as Freedom House, are major sponsors of cyber-dissidence:

“Political dissidents from China, Iran, Russia, Egypt, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba will travel to Dallas to join with Fellows of the George W. Bush Institute, experts from Freedom House, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the U.S. Government and other leaders in the field to discuss the successes and challenges ofInternet-based political dissident movements around the world.

Rami Nakhle doesn’t hide his interests in American organisations. On
his Facebook page, he lists the following as “interests”: National
Democratic Institute (NDI), chaired by Madeleine Albright, Human Rights
Watch and the U.S. Embassy Damascus. Nakhle’s interest in these organisations clearly shows which side
he’s on, just like SCN member Radwan Ziadeh, former fellow of the
National Endowment for Democracy, another organization well-known for
its links with the CIA.

In an interview with the Guardian,
the cyberactivist claims to be harassed by the Syrian secret police, on
his Facebook wall. It might be true, but it would be a rather unusual
tactic for a secret police, which usually, as its name says, acts
secretly. Such harassment is more likely to be black propaganda — people
opposed to the regime trying to make the Syrian authorities look bad. A
kind of “cyber false flag” on Facebook, for everyone to see.

The “Syrian uprising” seems to be a copy and paste of the “protest
movement” in Libya, which was conducive to a NATO invasion and regime
change. The mainstream press has once again one principal source of
information – the opposition groups. The media neglects military
casualties and fails to report that armed gunmen, 17 000 according to a report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies,
are among the protesters. A non-elected body, the SNC, ironically is
upheld as a democratic movement and is offered “credibility” as well
as extensive mainstream media coverage.

Arab uprising prompts search for differences and similarities in Armenia

The
shockwaves of the Egyptian revolution completed late last week through
a lasting popular uprising have lightly reached Armenia in the form
of talk and speculation and wishful thinking on the part of Armenia’s
frail opposition. But pro-establishment forces in Armenia as well as
some international experts see little reasons to expect developments in
the country according to the Egypt or Tunisia scenarios.
Anti-government protests in Egypt began on January 25 and snowballed
into a popular push to remove the government through demonstrations in
the streets of capital Cairo and elsewhere in this major Arab country,
forcing the veteran ruler Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30
years in power.While the situation in post-Mubarak
Egypt is far from being calm, with continued looting and violence
reported even after the dismantling of the Mubarak reign, the
significance of the developments in the country for a possible chain
reaction elsewhere in the region and beyond can hardly be
overestimated. The Armenian opposition, which unsuccessfully attempted
to achieve a government change through similar nonstop street protests
this month three years ago, is convinced that sooner or later the wave
of revolutions will reach this region as well. But its representatives
say that unlike in Egypt where hundreds of people were reportedly
killed and thousands were injured in street violence, they can lead a
revolution without victims and festruction.Local
pro-government parliamentarians however believe at this time Armenia is
immune to any sort of revolution or social riot. After Mubarak’s
resignation on Friday, Armenia’s main opposition Armenian National
Congress (ANC) issued a statement hailing the “victory of the people of
Egypt”, which, according to the Armenian opposition, proved that “any
tyrant in the world is powerless in the face of a peaceful popular
mobilization.”According to former foreign minister
Alexander Arzumanyan, who was imprisoned in the wake of the 2008
post-election clashes in Yerevan on charges of organizing the riots,
says that “if a tyrant like Mubarak who has ruled for 30 years gets
toppled, it won’t be difficult to topple the petty tyrants here.”
While, according to Arzumanyan, the slogans of the Egyptian revolution,
such as “bread, freedom, dignity”, are fully applicable in Armenia as
well, the ANC, which will launch a series of public rallies on February
18, excludes a revolution according to the Egypt scenario in Armenia.ANC
coordinator Levon Zurabyan welcomes “the victory of the people of
Egypt”, but at the same time he stresses that it is not acceptable for
their movement. “We must exclude bloodshed and similar disturbances, we
need a smooth political process, we need to reach a velvet
revolution,” Zurabyan tells ArmeniaNow, adding, though, that all
prerequisites for a revolution according to the Egypt or Tunisia
scenarios do exist in Armenia. “Of course, there are major
prerequisites [for such a revolution], such as the social and political
crisis, and mounting social protest,” says Zurabyan. Many analysts in
Armenia believe that the stirred wave of revolutions will rather have
an indirect effect on Armenia, but it is possible that it will become
“a catalyst in conditions of the started social riot.”Meanwhile,
a leading American research center, Stratfor, published a report last
week, concluding that an Egypt scenario was unlikely to occur in
Armenia. “Armenia is not typically prone to large-scale unrest and
protests, though recently the country’s opposition has called for a
large rally February 18 in Yerevan’s Liberty Square, citing Egypt as an
inspiration,” the Stratfor report said. Zurabyan dismissed the report
as a superficial attempt at analysis.While banned
street trade in Yerevan, a row over customs clearance for car owners
and individual entrepreneurs importing goods from Turkey continues to
fuel protest moods in Yerevan and elsewhere in the country government
representatives in Armenia insist that “social riots in the country are
impossible.” “There are no such prerequisites, because our government
is doing everything and is taking serious steps to carry out reform,”
Deputy Parliament Speaker Samvel Nikoyan, representing the ruling
Republican Party, tells ArmeniaNow. Meanwhile, chairman of the Armenian
Sociological Association Gevorg Poghosyan warns that “events in the
Arab world also threaten Armenia”, which “may lead to
self-destruction.”According to the sociologist,
regression has been observed in all the areas examined by his center,
namely in education, military, and health. “This regression poses more
danger than the tragic events of March 1 (2008), moreover, emigration
looms large again, one of the reasons for this [increasing] emigration
is the growing threat of war on the Karabakh front. These are serious
prerequisites,” says Poghosyan, warning that unless curbed, this
self-destructive trend may even result in the loss of statehood.

Armenia’s
president Serzh Sargsyan might be a nice guy, but he came to power by
force of failed elections. He should step down and finally oversee the
conduct of post-Soviet Armenia’s first free polls since 1991, the year
it declared independence. The nation he aspires to represent deserves
no less. Democracy must become an Armenian benchmark,
not a motto thrown about to Western “partners” and other interlocutors
who toast that best of systems, but then kill it with their
duplicitous policies.

Sargsyan’s
Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul is also a nice man, but he continues
to represent a denialist regime that sponsors the killing of
journalists such as Hrant Dink, strangles its minorities, and is the
legal heir of the Ottoman Empire, which committed genocide against the
Armenian people and dispossessed it of its ancestral homeland. Gul’s
and his just-too-sly foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s recent
addresses at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in
Strasbourg—and the outlandish bluster of EU Affairs Minister Egemen
Bagis at Auschwitz—beg the point. Modern-day Turkey must face history
and itself, recognize the great genocide, and cease its unlawful and
inhuman occupation of Western Armenia.

Azerbaijani
president Ilham Aliev is not so nice, but he is more honest in his
authoritarian and occupationist demeanor. Mountainous Karabagh, or
Artsakh, is Armenian land, his predecessors lost what they never had in a
war of aggression they unleashed two decades ago, and they will never
see it again except as good neighbors. He would do himself and
humanity a necessary favor by respecting the rights of his own
citizens, by returning the Armenian heartlands, including Shahumyan and
Nakhichevan, still under Azerbaijani occupation to their rightful
owners, and by making full redress to the hundreds of thousands of
Armenians, Lezgins, Talishes, Tats, and other minorities which he and
his have attempted to destroy.

If international law,
self-determination, decolonization, and basic liberty are to carry
true, not rhetorical import in the life and development of the
contemporary world, then it must be ruled by rights equally guaranteed.
Mountainous Karabagh, like Kosovo and Abkhazia, is the cutting-edge litmus test and must be recognized de jure and
without discrimination by the community of nations. Who will be the
first to recognize all three at once and to demonstrate that law and
rights are worth more than a dollar in global affairs today? Georgia’s
man Mikheil Saakashvili is revered occidentally but ridiculed in the
east. He has brought some truly meaningful changes to his homeland and
enjoys due credit. At the same time, he continues to trample the
ethnic, religious, and linguistic rights of the Armenian region known to
all as Javakhk. He ought to rediscover his democratic edge and
renounce the xenophobic side of policies and prejudices.

Russia’s
leaders, too, must get with the game and finally recognize the
fundamental rights of their “strategic ally.” It’s time to end the
imperialistic, even if soft, design to control Armenia as its
traditional, God-given “forepost.” Either accept Armenia’s sovereignty
and stand in true partnership with it—internationally, nationally,
democratically—or let it go and face a new day. We all need that new
day, and there is no need to blame the other: All persons and peoples
have been mentioned herein without offense and with deference to their predicaments and interests. But this is Armenia’s last stand—and ultimate responsibility.

The
U.S. State Department has refused to comment on the veracity of newly
published documents that show top American diplomats in Yerevan
criticizing the state of affairs in Armenia. A Russian whistle-blowing
website, which claims to be a partner of WikiLeaks, published this week
what it called cables sent to Washington by U.S. Ambassador Marie
Yovanovitch and her former deputy, Joseph Pennington. Yovanovitch
purportedly analyzed a spate of high-profile killings and other violent
incidents that happened in Armenia in October 2009. In one of those
incidents, a nephew of President Serzh Sarkisian reportedly beat up and
badly injured a man at a Yerevan nightclub.

The
cable attributed to Yovanovitch says violence perpetrated by senior
Armenian officials, government-linked businessmen and their relatives
appears to have become the norm in the country. There is a widespread
sense of impunity among such individuals, she allegedly wrote. Another
purported cable was sent to Washington by Pennington in April 2008 and
focused on emigration from Armenia. The diplomat, who was the U.S.
charge d’affaires in Yerevan at the time, allegedly suggested that the
process accelerated after the February 2008 presidential election and
the ensuing government crackdown on the Armenian opposition. More and
more middle-class Armenians are losing faith in their country’s future,
he said, according to the Russian website.

The
U.S. Embassy in Yerevan on Wednesday declined to say whether the
documents are authentic. In a statement sent to RFE/RL’s Armenian
service, it said only that U.S. diplomatic cables often carry “tentative
and incomplete” assessments of the situation in a particular country
and do not necessarily reflect U.S. foreign policy. The statement also
reiterated the State Department’s strong condemnation of the disclosure
by WikiLeaks and other news sources of its secret diplomatic
correspondence.

The
annual report of Freedom House, released on Thursday, again put
Armenia on the list of ‘partly free’ countries, whereas Nagorno-Karabakh
has registered regress, being defined as a ‘not free’ territory
instead of the previous ‘partly free’. Freedom in the World 2011: The
Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy Report’s estimation given to
Karabakh causes concerns, as Karabakh previously got a higher
estimation than Azerbaijan, whereas now both are considered to be
authoritarian.Since 2002, Washington-based ‘Freedom
House’ global human rights watchdog has considered Armenia to be a
‘partly free’ country along with its neighboring Georgia, whereas
Azerbaijan was a ‘not free’ country during the recent years. According
to the methodology of the report, a ‘partly free’ country is one in
which there is limited respect for political rights and civil
liberties. Partly Free states frequently suffer from an environment of
corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and a
political landscape in which a single party enjoys dominance despite a
certain degree of pluralism.A ‘not free’ country is
one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties
are widely and systematically denied. (One point is the best index in
this table, and seven points is the worst.) This year’s report, as the
previous one, gave six points to the expression of a political right
and its defense, and four points went to the defense of civil freedom.
As compared to the previous five points Armenia has registered regress
since 2009, after the controversial elections in 2008 and the
post-election clashes.According to the methodology of
the report, six points goes to those countries where “systems are ruled
by military juntas, one-party dictatorships, religious hierarchies, or
autocrats. These regimes may allow only a minimal manifestation of
political rights, such as some degree of representation or autonomy for
minorities.” The decline of Nagorno-Karabakh’s index in the
report is explained by the absence of an opposition at the
Parliamentary elections 2010.Meanwhile, Karabakh and
Armenia do not agree with such a definition. According to Spokesperson
of President of Nagorno-Karabakh Davit Babayan, “the report is
imperfect, and not deeply studied.” “It is necessary to hold a deep
examination for making such a conclusion, something which has not been
done in Karabakh; and I believe this estimation is given for some
geopolitical purposes,” Babayan told ArmeniaNow.

An
international media watchdog criticized Armenian authorities for
maintaining pressure on the country’s media and for harassing local
journalists. The annual “Attack on the Press” report” released by the
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Thursday singled out the new
broadcast law that gives regulators broad powers to revoke TV licenses
and also mentions Gyumri-based Gala TV, a rare critical broadcaster,
which faces an array of government pressures. “As his
government strengthened ties with Russia, President Serzh Sargsyan had
to quell lingering domestic discontent over electoral fraud and
economic woes, particularly in the construction and mining industries.
New legislation granted regulators broad new powers to award and revoke
licenses, while putting severe limits on the number of provincial
broadcast licenses. Self-censorship remained widespread in the media,
as lawlessness curbed the activities of journalists, human rights
defenders, and opposition leaders,” the report says.The
report says the most drastic step occurred in June when the president
signed into law amendments to the Law on Television and Radio that
tightened control of the country's influential broadcast media. The
government tried to deflect attention from the restrictive amendments
by embedding them into a package of measures meant to move radio and
television stations from analog to digital signals. Sargsyan ignored
domestic and international protests over the restrictions, which are
seen as benefiting his Republican Party as it approaches parliamentary
elections set for 2012.The amendments enable
government regulators to grant or revoke licenses without explanation,
as well as impose programming restrictions that would confine some
stations to narrow themes such as culture, education, and sports,
according to news reports. Analysts said the changes would provide the
government legal cover to keep the popular news outlet A1+ off the air.
The amendments positioned Sargsyan to maintain control over the
country's docile television and radio stations, most of which were owned
by pro-government politicians and businessmen. Propagandistic state
media retained important financial subsidies from various government
budgets and privileged access to official information. While print and
online media were more pluralistic, their reach was limited to a
primarily urban and educated audience.Throughout the
year, police officers routinely harassed, assaulted, and arrested
journalists, according to local press reports and media analysts.
Prosecutors regularly colluded in this practice by failing to
investigate police officers, even filing charges on occasion against
journalists who protested abuses, CPJ research showed.

The
activities of the new mayor of Yerevan Karen Karapetyan started with
very unpopular steps that have stirred a lot of talk among the public.
Karapetyan, who had for years headed ArmRosGazprom, an 80-percent
Russian Gazprom-owned company, began his tenure with a requirement for
his employees to take Russian language courses. Reports in the media on
this decision have made lots of Yerevan residents wonder why a
municipality in Armenia needs the Russian language so urgently. Many
also wondered why Russian Embassy advisor Viktor Krivopuskov, who is
also head of the Armenia affiliate of Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian
agency for international humanitarian cooperation, was present at the
opening of the courses.Lessons for 26 employees in 11
divisions of the City Hall will be held for three months by Tereza
Mirjiferjyan and Armen Aghulyan, the two leading Russian language
educators of the Russian Educational-Methodical Center of the Russian
Language (REMCRL) of the Rossotrudnichestvo representation in Armenia.
Opening the courses, Krivopuskov noted that knowledge of the Russian
language will increase the quality of managerial decision making,
interaction with the Russian-speaking population of the city, as well as
facilitate work in “developing and strengthening friendly relations
with cities and regions of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent
States as a whole, where Russian still remains a working language.”A
summary of critical Armenian media writing in this regard is as
follows: Krivopuskov’s objective is to spread the Russian language and
influence in Armenia. Does the mayor of Yerevan also consider this to be
his objective? Apparently, he is still closely associated with
ArmRosGazprom and feels like a representative of the interests of the
Russian company, more than of Yerevan citizens. On the day of the
launch of the courses, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan signed the law
on introducing amendments and additions into the laws “On the
Language” and “On General Education”, which effectively removes the ban
on the functioning of school in Armenia with curricula taught in a
language other than Armenian.In accordance with these
amendments, 11 schools with foreign-language curricula will operate in
Armenia - two of them will be private schools (in Jermuk and Dilijan)
and nine will work on the basis of international treaties. A
considerable part of the country’s intelligentsia has been opposing the
legislation. A civil initiative “We Are Against the Reopening of
Foreign-Language Schools” held a series of public protests. Under the
pressure of those demonstrations of protest the number of
foreign-language schools allowed to be opened by law was reduced, and
some other changes were introduced in the original bill. It also became
clear that the Armenian society is unwilling to return to the days
when the Russian language was considered to be the state language.Representatives of the public pressure group have already called the decision by the Yerevan mayor “unconstitutional”.

It
is a question in the thoughts of observers and participants of
socio-political life here (which in fact is all of us), as unrest has
spread into Algeria, Yemen and others places, and has turned Egypt
inside out. Yesterday, even Jordan – a monarchy – saw its government
fired, a pre-emptive move by King Abdullah II in the face of citizen
discontent at leadership which the king himself said “had sometimes put
their own interests ahead of those of the public.” It
started when a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire December 28
(and later died) in protest of a law banning sales of goods in the
street. The next week, the Mayor of Yerevan began a crackdown on the
Armenian capital’s street vendors.The cancer that
finally ate its way into the brain of public conscience in Tunisia
started as a tumor of unemployment, lack of opportunities for youth,
inflation, and a growing gap between the ultra-rich and the hopeless
poor – all conditions that define Armenia in 2011. In Egypt, where
yesterday a crowd measured by the New York Times as “hundreds of
thousands” filled Cairo’s main square, protestors railed against “an
illegitimate president” in hateful solidarity against a regime under
which, CNN reported, “Egypt’s economy was stagnant for decades, but in
the past 10 years started to grow, creating bigger differences between
rich and poor”.Again, the similarities are compelling.
An Al Jazeera reporter called the movement (estimated by the Arabic
network at more than a million) “people power”. And there is the answer
to why such a revolt will not (even if some think it should) occur in
Armenia. Here, there is no “people power”. There are 10s of thousands –
as proved in 2008 – who are willing to follow a leader, but none who
are willing to lead themselves. There are no grass-roots movements
here, where the soil of democratic will remains infertile even two
decades after the toxic waste of communism should have been cleaned.When
a man, sadly and quite literally, sparked a social movement in
Tunisia, his countrymen recognized themselves in his tortured
desperation. In Armenia, those who have valid grievance are waiting for
an authority figure to voice it for them. That a populist, Tigran
Karapetyan, with a message no deeper than bumper sticker slogans, could
rally 6,000 or more followers – as many, in fact, as the major
opposition bloc – indicates how low the bar has dropped on social
movement in Armenia.Eduard Sharmazanov, a leader of
the Republican Party of Armenia, says that there will be no copy-cat
rebellion in Armenia. “Of course, there is discontent, but any country
that saw dramatic economic crisis, has it. Nonetheless, Armenian
authorities are determined to carry on the reforms designed to improve
our fellow countrymen’s living standards,” he said. He is right. His
reasoning as to why the public is submissive, however, is debatable.
The reforms that the current regime has implemented are indeed
laudable. Progress, depending on definition, can surely be seen in some
realms, particularly in quality of life for Armenia’s nascent middle
class (in Yerevan).It is, though, more likely that
Armenia’s apparent general passivity is brought on by lack of choice,
rather than by public confidence that the government is working for the
people. It may also be argued that those with the intellectual
capacity and professional resource to seek an improved life in Armenia,
are instead spending that energy on finding ways to leave the country.
(A 2009 Gallup report found that 39 percent of Armenians said they
aspired to move from the country.)And, into any
discussion of whether things in Armenia are getting better or worse
under this leadership – and there’s some of each – arises the phrase
that is on protest placards in Cairo: “illegitimate government”. Sadly
for Armenia’s hopes of becoming democratic, this “illegitimate
government” may very well be better than the alternative that would have
emerged had elections three years ago been held fairly. Lacking a
movement that grew organically, Armenians at both political polarities
were willing to follow dubious leaders in that ill-fated election.
"There is no political group leading the people,” a human rights
activist in Cairo told media. “There is no one leading the people.
People are just doing it.”I am in a friend’s car and
he is behind the wheel. We are at a Yerevan intersection, and the street
we need to reach is just ahead of us, across this street and about 30
meters to the left. Instead of going directly across the street and
turning to enter our intended passageway, my friend turns right, goes
nearly one kilometer and, under a blue sign indicating “U” he turns
back, drives to the destined street and carries on. “Why didn’t you
just go across the street and turn left?” I ask him. “Because there was
no sign saying I could do that,” he replied. And there, anecdotally, is
why Armenia is not Tunisia. Or Egypt. Or whatever fill-in-the-blank
country is next to launch a popular movement to exert the will of its
people. These Armenians won't turn unless somebody says they can.

Perspective on media: Civilitas organizes discussion about state of television, newspapers and internet

Under
an amended law and by the regulatory body’s decision only 18
television companies late last year got licenses for digital broadcasts
in supposedly competitive tenders, and this narrowing of the field,
according to experts, first of all hits freedom of speech in Armenia.
Some specialists urge the television companies that lost or could not
renew their licenses as a result of the competitions to unite and battle
together over this matter. “The television companies that were
deprived of the air have not united yet, but I still believe that time
will come and they will join their hands together. Employees, founders,
directors of TV companies must understand that we can fight and not
give in,” said Gyumri GALA TV Executive Director Karine Harutyunyan at a
Wednesday discussion organized by the Civilitas Foundation.(GALA,
based in Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri, is a rare television
company giving voice to the opposition. It will go out of the air in
2015 after losing its license in the December contest administered by
the National Commission on Television and Radio. A1+, off the air since
2002, also failed to regain its license, while ALM lost one and is off
the air since January 21. Another three companies had not even made a
bid to renew their licenses from the very beginning.)Experts
also say that unlike television companies, which are largely
controlled by the authorities, there is a certain variety among the
print media, but this area also has drawbacks. “The problem is that in
Armenia newspapers still do not depend on their readerships, if they
have money, they go into print, if they don’t, they don’t come out. It
is not the readership that decides the orientation and style of a given
newspaper, and as long as there is no link between media and the
public, media cannot be independent,” says editor-in-chief of the
Karabakh-based Analitikon magazine Gegham Baghdasaryan.The
number of internet users in Armenia grows from year to year. While
websites have seen more visitors recently and some believe it is
possible that in the near future the internet will completely replace
television, most specialists at the Civiltas-moderated discussion did
not agree that it will happen soon. “The internet provides ample
opportunities, but it is still too early to say that it will soon
replace television, but, of course, there is such a prospect. The thing
is that journalists do not yet manage this field,” says co-founder of
the Epress internet magazine Armen Melikbekyan. Civilitas founder
Vartan Oskanian, too, does not see any essential impact of the internet
on the political field in the next few years.“I agree
that the internet is rapidly developing in Armenia, but it will still
take 5-10 years for the internet to be able to make an essential change
in our political field,” said Oskanian, who served as Armenia’s
foreign minister in 1998-2008. “So, one shouldn’t pin too much hope on
it at this moment.”Specialists are also concerned that
there is no independent media institution in Armenia. According to the
Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Speech, nine cases of
physical violence against journalists were reported in Armenia in 2010,
as compared to 11 in 2009. Instead, the number of reported cases of
exerting pressure on journalists increased. The Committee’s report also
notes that very often no criminal cases are instituted in connection
with violence against journalists.

In
2011 Armenia is losing the current or potential support of two major
foundations. It became known on Tuesday that the Lincy Foundation shuts
down after 22 years of work during which it has made major gifts of
over $1.1 billion to schools, hospitals, scientific research projects
and other charitable endeavors. More than $200 million in Lincy money
has been spent on Armenia. This coming September will see the
completion of the U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Account
program, which since 2006 had planned to assist with a total of $236
million to projects in irrigation and agricultural areas. But in the
wake of the 2008 post-election violence in Armenia, the programs were
curtailed to $180 million.The charitable organization
founded by Armenian-American businessman Kirk Kerkorian will transfer
all of its assets, currently valued at $200 million, to the UCLA
Foundation. Before its shutdown, in early February, Lincy donated $10.5
million to the United Armenian Fund and a major portion of this grant
will be used by the UAF to renovate and reconstruct six schools in
northern Armenia. The start of major Lincy projects in Armenia was in
2001 with the three-year $150-million project targeting road
construction, housing construction in the earthquake zone, construction
of cultural centers and schools.In 2006-2008, the
foundation implemented its second major program in Armenia with $60
million. The means were equally divided into three programs -- Yerevan
streets repairs, school building and road construction. Reasons for
Lincy’s closure of the Fund are still unclear and those potentially
privy to its affairs have mostly stopped short of providing any
commentary or interpretation. Prominent Diaspora commentator, editor of
the California Courier and former Lincy vice president Harut
Sassounian declined ArmeniaNow’s request for comment, but cautioned
against “unwarranted and erroneous sweeping generalizations” as to the
Lincy decision.While saying that the reasons are
unknown, several representatives of the Armenian opposition, however,
say Armenian authorities who, to put it mildly, were guilty of
“mismanaging the funds,” have caused the 93-year old billionaire to
close his hand on handouts to Armenia. “It is not a coincidence that the
funds for repairing schools were given not to an Armenia-based fund,
but to the United Armenian Fund,” opposition Heritage Party MP Anahit
Bakhshyan told ArmeniaNow. (The United Armenian Fund is the collective
effort of the Armenian Catholic Eparchy, Armenian General Benevolent
Union, Armenian Missionary Association of America, Armenian Relief
Society, Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, the Lincy
Foundation, and Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America.)In
the past several years (at least three) Kirk Kerkorian and his Lincy
Foundation has not made any major donation to the All-Armenian Fund
Hayastan either. Still during the first phase of the Lincy Foundation’s
programs in Armenia, in 2001-2003, when restoration work worth $150
million was carried out, 17 cultural centers were renovated, about
3,600 homes were built, the activities were dogged by allegations that
it was “a big wash” and that the money was not being used purposefully.
After the end of this phase of the project it was intended to solve
the housing problem in the earthquake zone.As then
president Robert Kocharyan said during the ceremony opening one of the
buildings constructed with the foundation’s allocations “due to this
serious investment in 2003 we solve the housing problem.” But still
today up to 4,000 families remain in makeshift housing in the
earthquake area despite further serious allocations from the foundation
for housing construction in northern Armenia. In 2006, the President’s
audit service began to conduct checks at the Foundation’s Armenia
office whose coordinator was President Kocharyan’s staff manager
Artashes Tumanyan. While reports surfaced (though unconfirmed) that
Tumanyan was being questioned by the National Security Service (KGB)
department combating organized crime, he was relieved from the
foundation post, replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan.The
last controversy surrounding the Foundation was in June 2010, during
the discussion of the report on the fulfillment of the 2009 state
budget when in the report of the Lincy Foundation presented to the
lawmakers it was stated that the $17.8-million project had been
fulfilled completely, by 100 percent. “It was mentioned in that
performance report that 17 schools had been renovated and about $19
million had been spent on the work. However, as a person who is from
this sphere (a long time educator) and is very well aware in which
schools actual work was done, I saw in the list the names of schools
that had not been repaired,” says Bakhshyan, who had worked as school
principal before becoming a lawmaker. In response to the question raised
by Bakhshyan, Deputy Prime Minister Gevorgyan explained that no work
had been done in seven schools because of the budget reducing due to
the dollar-dram fluctuations.“First, this answer did
not satisfy me, because in the agreement there is a point that the
government is committed to bridge the gap that originates because of
such exchange rate fluctuations to make sure the program is fulfilled
by 100 percent. Why didn’t the government close that difference and was
that difference really equivalent to the price of repairs at seven
schools?” the lawmaker said. No clear answers have yet been provided,
but like many other Armenians, the lawmaker feels sorry that Armenia is
deprived of very serious funds that would give a unique opportunity to
develop the country. “I regret it very much. Our authorities once again
should think carefully about what they are doing and how much love and
confidence of their homeland they lose because of their interests,”
Bakhshyan told ArmeniaNow.

By
signing an agreement to endorse President Serzh Sarkisian in the 2013
elections, Armenia’s ruling coalition parties attempted to reinforce
their positions for the upcoming 2012 parliamentary elections and the
subsequent presidential race. For the Republican Party of Armenia,
Prosperous Armenia and the Country of Law parties, the announcement was
a way to assert their rule and block opposition forces from gaining
ground or, for that matter, having a voice in government. The
declaration will set Armenia back with grave consequences for its
future and any hope for advancement of democratic norms in the country.

In
their declaration, the parties claimed to have protected Armenia and
its citizens from dangers to national security, economic collapse as a
result of the global crisis and ridding the government of corruption
and bribery. Yet a quick glance at their rule, since the 2007
parliamentary elections, only shows that there have been no tangible
advances in Armenia, and in some cases, there have been gross
violations of human rights and an effort to endanger Armenia’s national
security.

“Today
the coalition forces have more than 100 deputies,” Armenian
Revolutionary Federation Supreme Council of Armenia chairman Rustamian
told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on Friday. “Can their presence get any
bigger? At whose expense? Must there be no opposition at all in this
country?” The coalition has vowed that its campaign for the
parliamentary elections will yield even more seats in parliament.

ARF
Bureau chairman, Hrant Markarian said: “In effect, a dictatorship, a
totalitarian system is thus being formed in the government camp.” If
anything, the signing of the declaration should send a clear signal to
Armenia’s electorate that the fate of the country and its government is
in the hands of the people. For 20 years, successive regimes have used
coercion, intimidation and vote rigging to assume power and amass
incomprehensible wealth at the expense of the country’s well-being.

The
ruling elite must not be allowed to bulldoze through yet another set
of elections, through which it aims to cement its hold on both the
legislative and executive—and as a result judicial—branches of the
government and without the checks and balances continue to govern with
impunity and reckless disregard toward the aspirations of its citizens
and the Armenian nation.

The
people must rise up and learn their rights, empower themselves and
take part in elections as informed voters and concerned citizens. The
ARF’s campaign, announced earlier this week and officially launched on
Friday, aims to bring together all facets of society under one tent and
engage all voters to take party in a massive electoral reform
campaign. The people of Armenia must come together and defeat the
ruling coalition’s effort to further solidify its hold on Armenia.

Former
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian accused President Serzh Sarkisian on
Friday of seeking to tighten his grip on power in utter disregard of
democratic principles and the popular will. In a written
statement, Oskanian expressed serious concern about key points of a
joint declaration issued by Armenia’s three governing parties on
Thursday. “The ruling coalition’s announcement highlights the
authorities’ disregard of democracy, elections and the public will,” he
said.

“The
ruling coalition has openly declared that in the upcoming
parliamentary elections they are not prepared to do what political
forces are fundamentally meant to do: that is, to enter into open
competition.” The declaration says, among other things, that
Sarkisian’s ruling coalition will gain an “amplified” presence in the
Armenian parliament as a result of elections expected in May 2012. It
already controls the overwhelming majority of seats in the current
National Assembly.

“The
coalition, which already enjoys absolute majority, intends to push out
of the parliament those in opposition who, as it is, constitute an
extremely small minority,” said Oskanian. “This does not help
alleviate the already complex social, economic and political situation
in the country; instead, it further exacerbates the situation. Rather
than securing the continuity of those forces which are themselves the
main obstacle to improving conditions, the coalition should have worked
to secure a balance within the government, as an alternative to
absolute rule,” he added.Oskanian, who served as
foreign minister in former President Robert Kocharian’s administration
from 1998-2008, has been increasingly critical of the current Armenian
government since leaving office. His criticism has until now focused on
Sarkisian’s foreign policy and, in particular, Armenia’s rapprochement
with Turkey.

Every
year, efforts by the Armenian Diaspora in the United States to win
formal Congressional and Presidential recognition of the Armenian
Genocide culminate on April 24, the date Armenians mark as their
Genocide Remembrance Day. It’s a hot-button issue which historians
still debate. Genocide scholars and Armenian historians declare that
deliberate genocide occurred, while many Turkish historians and Ottoman
specialists question argue that Ottoman officials did not conduct
premeditated genocide, but rather that between 600,000 and 1.5 million
Armenians died in the fog of war. Regardless, the deaths of so many are
a tragedy, and one that should not be forgotten. Still, questions and
aspersions of denial and negation will only be settled when both the
Turks and Armenians open their archives to everyone without regard to
nationality or ethnicity.

I
do not deny the sensitivity of the genocide issue, but Armenian
American organizations are doing both themselves and U.S. national
security a disservice by making the genocide issue the community’s
marquee issue. History must be respected, but the future is as important
as the past—if not more so. To the present day, Turkey and Armenia
remain adversaries. Traditionally, the American alliance with Turkey has
driven a wedge between Washington and Yerevan. Sadly, Armenia remains
largely antagonistic to the United States. In 2009, Armenia voted with
the United States on important issues at the United Nations less than half the time; In contrast, Israel voted with the United States 100% of the time.

Armenia has also embraced Iran to the detriment of U.S. interests and security. Armenia has even reportedly supplied Iran with weapons, which the Islamic Republic used to kill Americans.

It
is long past time for Armenian organizations in the United States and
the congressmen who partner with them to demand change in Armenian
behavior. By ignoring Armenia’s orientation, the Armenian American
community squanders an unprecedented opportunity to build a true
partnership. Turkey has transformed from an ally into an adversary.
From a strictly realist perspective, never before have the
constellations oriented in such a favorable way to make the United
States receptive to Armenia, should Armenia seize the opportunity.

Yet
the Armenian community in the United States appears asleep at the
switch. It need not drop its interest in the genocide resolution, but it
might nevertheless prioritize strengthening the diplomatic and
strategic partnership between Washington and Yerevan. That partnership,
however, will not develop if the Armenian Diaspora cannot convince its
cousins in the Armenian homeland that a successful Armenian state could
be a military, security, economic, and diplomatic partner to the
United States—not a proxy for Iran or a puppet to Russia. Perhaps it’s
time for the good Congressmen and Congresswomen from California and New
Jersey to push back the next time Armenian lobbyists come knocking on
their doors.

The warped State Department-hatched Turkey-Armenia Protocols did not
yield the necessary results for the US, nor have efforts to strong-arm
Armenia into making dangerous concessions on the Karabakh front, so the
US has renewed an old “concern” by alleging that Iran is using Armenia
to for financial transactions that might violate international sanctions
on Tehran over its nuclear program.

An exclusive report by Reuters Tuesday,
citing a nebulous “Western intelligence report” and quoting anonymous
diplomatic sources, claimed that Iran is seeking financial alternatives
“in countries that do not work according to the dictates of the West” is
looking to expand its banking foothold in Armenia to allegedly deceive
Western governments that have been attempting to curtail Iranian banking
activities worldwide to thwart Iran’s nuclear

program.

The so-called “Western intelligence report,” according to Reuters,
has singled out the Yerevan-based ACBA Credit Agricole Bank, one of the
largest in Armenia, as one of Iran’s principal targets. Reuters also
spoke to an anonymous Western UN diplomat who confirmed that ACBA was “a
bank that has come up in connection with Iran.” He declined to provide
details of any potentially illicit ACBA transactions linked to Iran,
said Reuters.

This fracas has prompted the Armenian Central Bank to issue a blunt
denial, echoing earlier statements by ACBA officials, who in the Reuters
report, vehemently denied the allegations that the financial
institution is being used by Iran for illicit activities.

“The Central Bank of Armenia obligates all banks and financial
institutions in the Republic of Armenia to scrutinize their
transactions, in order to avoid any possible involvement in transactions
considered unacceptable by the international community,” said a
statement issued by the CBA. “We don’t have any relationship with Iran,” The ACBA chief executive
Stepan Gishian told Reuters. “We never have, we don’t now and
furthermore we don’t plan on becoming a channel for financing Iran. What
you’re saying is complete nonsense.”

Furthermore, recent news reports indicate that Armenia has been
following the mandates set forth by the sanctions imposed both on Iran
and Syria, since Syrian and Iranian nationals of Armenian descent have
experienced difficulty opening bank accounts in Armenia, because of
their citizenship. This is especially disheartening to Armenians who are
leaving Syria due to the crisis there and are experiencing hurdles in
establishing themselves in Armenia.

The Reuters reports does state that Turkey and the United Arab
Emirates remain Iran’s largest banking connections, but claims that due
to US pressure, especially the government of Turkey has become more
vigilant in its business with Iran. Reportedly, President Serzh Sarkisian was cautioned by Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton during her visit in June to Armenia about US
concerns over the Iran’s interests in Armenia.

Iran remains one of Armenia’s largest trading partners with a
reported $1 billion in trade. Asbarez has extensively reported about the
intense desire by Armenia and Iran to strengthen their strategic
partnership through varied projects, including the construction of an
oil pipeline and a highway that would connect Iran’s port of Bandar
Abbas with Batumi in Georgia, thus providing a direct link for Armenia
to a seaport.

Evidently, this organic neighborly and centuries-old relationship
between Armenia and Iran does not sit well with the US and its Western
allies, who are keen on tightening the noose around Iran’s neck because
of concerns over its nuclear program and be damned whatever stands in
their way. However justified those concerns might be, Armenia should not be
penalized by the US, which in its efforts to police the world, is
bullying nations to conform to its standards.

If the US scrutinized its own domestic financial system as
meticulously as it does other nations’ perhaps the loopholes that
allowed for the collapse of the banking system and wide-spread
corruption in this country would have been avoided.

Moreover, if the US went as far as to caution Armenia, it has not
lifted a finger to force Turkey and Azerbaijan to lift their blockade of
Armenia, which has been in place since 1993 and in international legal
circles is considered an act of aggression or war. Instead the US has
concocted convoluted schemes—the Protocols and policy on Karabakh—that
abets Turkey to continue its denial of the Genocide and face history and
diminishes the sacred principle of self-determination.

The Reuter report is a harbinger of things to come. The failed
approaches by the US to address concerns in the South Caucasus have now
taken on a worrisome tone. How far will the US go to force its misplaced
policies on other nations, especially Armenia?

Yesterday, I testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s
Europe and Eurasian Subcommittee, which was investigating Iranian
strategy, influence, and interests in the Caucasus. As always, there’s good news and bad news
from the region. Azerbaijan remains a stalwart U.S. ally intolerant of
Iranian approaches. Georgia is as well, but after its October election
remains very much in play. Turkey’s efforts to subvert sanctions are well known. The greater problem today is Armenia:

According to a State Department cable released by Wikileaks, in
2008, U.S. diplomats concluded that Armenia shipped Iran weaponry, which
Iran then used to kill Americans.

In October 2011, a member of Armenia’s Nuclear Energy Organization
told the Iranian press that Tehran had enticed several Armenian nuclear
scientists to work in Iran’s nuclear program.

The Armenian community in the United
States is fortunate to be both vibrant and organized. It is unfortunate
that organizations representing the Armenian Diaspora in the United
States and the congressmen who partner with them do not do more to
encourage change in the Armenian government’s geopolitical behavior.
Certainly, Armenia is between a rock and a hard place. Russia looms
large, both culturally and politically, and Armenians are loathe to
unravel that relationship in an age when no one believes U.S. guarantees
of continued commitment.

Cultural links are also strong to Iran; when I first studied in the
Islamic Republic in the mid-1990s, my apartment was in Julfa, Isfahan’s
chief Armenian neighborhood. The Armenian community need not drop its
advocacy for recognition of the Armenian genocide, but by ignoring
Armenia’s pro-Iranian orientation, the Armenian-American community
squanders an opportunity to build a true strategic partnership between
Washington and Yerevan, a partnership which would certainly be to both
countries’ benefit.

On
Tuesday, the prestigious Forbes magazine published a list of the
world’s ten worst economies in which Armenia occupies the second place
next to Madagascar. Forbes has selected the worst ten
economies from among 117 countries according to three-year average
statistics for gross domestic product growth and inflation (including
the International Monetary Fund’s 2012 estimates), plus GDP per capita
and the current account balance, a measure of whether the country is
importing more than it exports.Compared with the list for 2010,
significant changes have taken place this year. While the previous
release included mostly African nations, this year the list also
includes Ukraine (4th position), Kyrgyzstan (7th) and Iran (10th). The
authors of the research consider not only the economic crisis, but also
mismanagement, corruption as causes of the decline of economies.“Onetime
losers like Ghana and Zimbabwe got their economic acts together and
moved off the list while some countries, including Armenia and Jamaica,
marched into the lower ranks primarily because of the global financial
crisis. Others, like Madagascar and Nicaragua, earned their positions
almost entirely due to the ineptitude of their rulers. It should come
as no surprise that eight of the 10 worst economies also were in the
bottom quartile of countries in Transparency International’s Global
Corruption Perceptions Index, with Guinea, Kyrgyzstan and Venezuela
scoring close to the bottom,” says the report.“Beyond income,
(corruption) extends to economic development,” it quotes Transparency
International’s Robin Hodess, group director for research and
knowledge, as saying. “All of the indices that reflect human
development suffer. Where government doesn’t work, economies don’t
grow.”According to Forbes, Armenia mainly suffered because of
the financial crisis: “Armenia’s economy shrank by 15% in 2009 as an
expatriate-financed construction boom fizzled along with the world
economy. With a mediocre growth forecast for the next few years, this
landlocked former Soviet republic, dependent upon Russia and Iran for
virtually all of its energy supplies, is struggling to keep up with the
rest of the world. Per-capita GDP of $3,000 is less than a third of
neighboring Turkey, and inflation is running at 7%. On top of that,
Russia cut back on supplies of diamonds, hurting Armenia’s once-thriving
diamond-processing industry.”Armenia’s well-known economist,
head of the “Alternative” Research Center Tatul Manaseryan tends to
trust the kind of assessment made by Forbes. “Usually, the Forbes
surveys are well grounded and our researches also show that Armenia’s
economy, to put it mildly, is not in a good condition. In this sense, I
can share this opinion. But I am confident that possibilities of
redressing the situation are not exhausted,” Manaseryan told
ArmeniaNow.

All
Armenians in the diaspora are quite familiar with the sadness, grief,
suffering, exile and relocation of those who escaped the Genocide. Here
in the US, drawing from lessons and experiences from our past, we
developed a value system, making us obedient to law and order, love of
education, rewards of hard work and blessings of freedom. As a
consequence, we have been extremely proud citizens of America. Next to
the Holy Bible, the greatest treasure we possess is the document that
proclaims us American citizens.

We
also forgot our homeland of Armenia and by all accounts and means,
have always helped her. Long before Turkish occupation and the
Genocide, the Soviet regime and the great earthquake of 1988, every
Diasporan Armenian gave support, love, talent, time and treasure to the
precious homeland. When Armenia declared independence some 20 years
ago, it was a most thankful moment of prayer, pride and joy for us all.
With foremost and firmest promise, we determined to help the homeland
in every way possible to ensure her security, health and progress.

The
people of Armenia, in turn, were deeply appreciative of our help. They
demonstrated honest appreciation, deep love and heartfelt admiration
for all that we did and still do, to improve their lot. Diasporan
Armenians who visited the homeland experienced greatest warmth, deep
love and fellowship and never forgot this most unique experience.

Since
the election of Serge Sargisian as president of Armenia, unprecedented
and somewhat questionable practices were sought by him and his cabinet
to further solidify relations with Diasporan Armenians. The government
started to shower some leaders, philanthropists and wealthy Armenians
in the diaspora with royal banquets, citations, honors and medals. His
government even created a new position of Commissioner For
Armenia-Diaspora Relations, who traveled across the Armenian world,
extolling us to love Armenia more, give more, care more and promise
never to forget the homeland. Not satisfied with all these and to
further offer gloss and flattery to diaspora, the president of Armenia
is offering dual citizenship to certain Diasporan Armenians of his
choosing. The who and why is still obscure and highly questionable. The
very idea of dual citizenship is divisive, misguided and totally
absurd. This idea, or practice, should be buried in the deepest pit in
Armenian soil and never see daylight again.

Unfortunately,
this is not all. Lo and behold, the president of Armenia is
considering restructuring the constitution of Armenia to include a
number of Diasporan Armenians as members of parliament. This
misbegotten and misguided concept seems not only unprecedented, but
ridiculous. Is it to satisfy the ego of some Diasporan Armenians, who
receive this honor? There must be a thousand-and-one questions regarding
this scheme and before any more time is spent on it, it should join
the same pit and never see sunrise or sunset again. President Serge
Sargisian and his governing body are rushing from the ridiculous to the
sublime and spending precious time to seduce Diasporan Armenians.

It
is tragic, disturbing and sad to read or hear of demonstrations,
protests, hunger strikes, discord and chaos in Armenia. Are we to assume
that our beloved homeland is becoming like a kite whose line has been
cut off? Truth, stark naked truth, demands that good government work
for the governed and abandon all schemes, pretense and misrule.

As
sure as I am that God’s sun breaks into a hundred million sapphires
over Armenian Lakes, and that any Diasporan Armenian visiting Armenia
feels he or she has stepped on the earth of God’s Eden of Genesis, that
sure I am that all Diasporan Armenians — some eight million of us —
will love more, do more, sacrifice more for homeland Armenia, if the
president of Armenia and his governing body make more effort, put more
passion, zeal and dedication and eliminate disunity, discord and
especially, all dramatics.

Across
an ocean and a continent, on a sliver of land tucked between two seas, a
little republic today enters its 20th year of independence. I know a
man there, an American by birth – except that 20 years ago, he quit his
law firm in Los Angeles, decided he had no further business in the
United States, and went to search for his destiny in Armenia. It was a
romantic time. One by one, the 15 Soviet satellites were breaking from
the Kremlin’s orbit, and exiled sons were returning to their homelands
to share in the creation of new republics. As
for my father, Raffi K. Hovannisian, once the football star of the Pali
High Dolphins, he left a promising legal career and moved with wife and
children to Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia. After independence
was officially declared on Sept. 21, 1991, my father was handed a fax
machine and a first month’s paycheck of 600 rubles – $143. He was told
he was the republic’s first minister of foreign affairs.

Post-Soviet seeds of democracy

All across the Soviet plains, the seeds of democracy were being sown
into soil tyrannized for generations, but no one doubted that they
would grow. My father certainly didn’t. Within a year, he had
established diplomatic relations with every major democracy in the
world. At United Nations headquarters in New York, he had raised the
red, blue, and orange Armenian flag. That was nearly 20 years
ago. Everything was possible then. But the shadow of history soon closed
in on the Armenians. The capital went dark. Faucets dried up. Grain
shipments stopped coming in. And suddenly, as if for the first time, the
Armenians realized where they were. To the west: a history of horror with Turkey, the memory of an unrequited genocide in 1915. To the east: the anticipation of war with Azerbaijan,
occupant of the ancient American enclave of Artsakh, or Mountainous
Karabagh. It is a dangerous thing, when survival becomes the sole
ambition of a people. But that is what happened to the Armenians in the years after independence.
They lost their hope, their cause, their conviction. They were not as
generous as they used to be. And the old Soviet symptoms reappeared.Corruption and failure

On
the streets of Yerevan, a generation of child beggars emerged.
Policemen waved batons for two-dollar bribes. Teachers worked for
bribes, too. The presidents came to control every judge, prosecutor, and
public defendant who wanted to keep his job. Fair trials and free elections became failed promises.
Incumbents almost always “won” – while losers almost never went home
without first leading a mob of a hundred thousand citizens through the
capital. In 1999, during a session of parliament, all the president’s
key adversaries were assassinated. My father long ago resigned
from the Yerevan government, but he, at least, never gave up the dream.
Instead, in 2001, he gave up his American passport once and for all. The
following year, he founded Heritage, a national-liberal party, which
now represents the opposition in the Yerevan parliament. To this day, my
father is admired by his people. In a recent poll, Gallup pegged his
popularity at 82 percent – but not for the obvious reasons. “Achke
kusht e,” the people say of him, “His eye is full.” In other words: the
man has seen the world, and he’s not in politics for the money. In
Armenia, that is enough. Today the Yerevan government is linked to a
group of powerful businessmen called “oligarchs,” who invest in and
control the political game. One of them has the monopoly on gas, another
the monopoly on sugar and flour. All of them have nicknames, armies of
bodyguards, and fleets of luxury cars escorting them ostentatiously
through the city.

Power-hungry tycoons

The
rulers are multimillionaires, the lot of them, though they have
incurred great debts to the original power tycoons surrounding the
Kremlin in Moscow, to whom they have been selling the country’s gold
mines and electricity plants. And they are ready to sell much more than
that. Last month, Armenia hosted a summit of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet alliance including Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – republics unclaimed by the West, republics
that are now following an ancient gravity to its source in mother
Russia. During the August meeting, Russia secured a 24-year extension of
its lease on a key military base in Armenia. Actually, lease isn’t the
word. The base is funded and sustained entirely by the Armenian state. Now
you see why today, in Yerevan, there is not much independence or
democracy left to celebrate. And by now my father, too, must see what
his romanticism has long prevented him from seeing: Armenia is not free,
not independent, not united. The Soviet soil has spit out the seeds of
democracy.

Hope foreshadows freedom

Of
course my father still keeps the faith, and there is some evidence to
support it. For the first time in Armenia, a civil society is taking
shape to bridge a government and a people, so far disenfranchised from
each other. Denied television airwaves, opposition media are now
transmitting their protest through the Internet. And that little party
in parliament, though it has not realized a revolution, can at least
symbolize – and foreshadow – a free and independent Armenia. And
so we hope, and we even know, that the tree of liberty will grow from
Armenian soil one day. But not today, not until, in the words of another
founding father, “it is refreshed by the blood of patriots and tyrants”
– both of which, I’m afraid, Armenia has plenty.

Armenia
is currently not eligible for receiving additional U.S. economic
assistance under a program designed to reward good governance and
reforms around the world, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch said on
Friday. She said the approaching parliamentary and presidential
elections in the country will be an opportunity for the Armenian
government to improve its democracy and human rights record and thus
again qualify for the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) program.

The
U.S. government approved $236 million worth of MCA assistance to
Armenia in 2006 to finance a rural development plan submitted by
Yerevan. In June 2008, Washington scrapped a $67 million segment of the
aid package, which envisaged the reconstruction of hundreds of
kilometers of rural roads. The decision was widely attributed to a
disputed presidential election held in February 2008 and a harsh
government crackdown on the Armenian opposition that followed it.

The
aid cut did not affect the rest of the MCA funding which is being
mainly channeled into Armenia’s battered irrigation networks. Their
ongoing refurbishment is due to be completed this September. Yovanovitch
and Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian visited on Friday the
central Aragatsotn province to inspect local irrigation canals that have
been rehabilitated with MCA funds. They also met with farmers that have
received training as part of the same scheme.

“We hope that this
program has made and will continue to make a real impact on the rural
community in terms of increased wealth,” Yovanovitch told journalists
there. The U.S. diplomat made clear that Yerevan can not apply for more
MCA aid for the time being. “Perhaps at some point in the future, there
might be a possibility,” she said. “Every year, every country is
reviewed for eligibility. At this point, Armenia is not eligible for a
second compact due to where it stands on the [MCA] indicators.”

Yovanovitch
specified that President Serzh Sarkisian’s administration should, among
other things, hold more democratic elections. “As Armenia enters into
an election cycle, with parliamentary elections next year and
presidential elections the year after, there is an opportunity to boost
these indicators,” she said. “Obviously, conduct on the day of elections
is an important thing but so is freedom of the press, freedom of
assembly, the many other things that go into general good governance,”
she added.

Yovanovitch urged the Armenian authorities to hold
free elections, respect civil liberties and embark on other “deep and
difficult” reforms in a recent speech at Yerevan State University. In
particular, she stressed the importance of “ensuring that peaceful,
lawful assemblies will not be harassed or broken up.”

Although
there is still more than a year to go until the next parliamentary
election, opposition parties in Armenia are already calling their
followers onto the streets. There is plenty of popular dissatisfaction
with the status quo, driven by rising prices and widespread poverty. But
experts say the scope for channelling that into real change is limited
by Armenia’s difficult relationships abroad, which its current leaders
can always cite as justification for tough controls at home.

Armenia
is still officially at war with Azerbaijan, and its troops garrison the
self-proclaimed republic of Nagorny Karabakh, so ruling politicians can
play the national security card if their authority is threatened. This
has allowed them to fend off demands for democratic reforms. The
government’s authoritarian tendencies, and its insistence on supporting
Karabakh, has won support from big businesses keen to keep their
monopolies safe from the Azerbaijani and Turkish competitors who might
flood in if a peace deal was signed.

Opposition parties seeking
to harness popular resentment of the government believe there is a limit
to what people will put up with in the name of national security. “One
fine day, a people who have nothing to lose and who have been driven to
extreme suffering, might cease to care about the views of opinion of
parliament, and even about Karabakh,” Armenian National Congress, ANC,
leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan told a rally of supporters last month.

Experts
say, however, that most people are not prepared to abandon their
fellow-Armenians in Karabakh, and fear a possible repeat of the conflict
with Azerbaijan. This plays into the government’s hands. “It’s clear
the Armenian public has a keen sense of the danger of new war with
Azerbaijan. That means that both the public and the opposition are more
restrained than they might be], and that citizens have to opt for
political stability over democratisation in many areas,” Garik Keryan,
head of politics in Yerevan State University’s international relations
faculty, said.

Commentators say the government tolerates
political freedoms as long as they do not interfere with its grip on
power, while the opposition movement remains divided among competing
personalities. People who attend opposition protests are often there
because they are against the government rather than actively drawn to
the opposition. Ter-Petrosyan’s ANC fails to make much ground because he
alienated many people in his time as Armenian president in the 1990s.

“Look
what this government has driven me to. I have a law degree and I’m
driving a taxi. They’re forcing people to team up with Levon,” Artur, a
29-year-old Yerevan resident said. “I remember the days of Levon’s
government – it was terrible then. But what else can you do? These
politicians are just humiliating us.”

Ter-Petrosyan has ruled out
a swift attempt to win power, comparing his political strategy to a
game of chess. That has led many analysts to argue that he is not
interested in changing the political set-up radically, just in putting
himself and his followers at the head of it. Political battles in
Armenia are often more about competing individuals than different
ideologies.

“The ANC probably a few tens of thousands of
supporters, and the Heritage party has fewer, since it isn’t as
well-organised,” public relations expert Samvel Martirosyan said.
“Heritage more closely resembles a collection of individuals.”

The
divisions among opposition groups were graphically evident on March 17,
when Ter-Petrosyan was taking part in a protest meeting in central
Yerevan and went past Heritage leader Raffi Hovhannisyan without
acknowledging the fact that the latter had been staging a hunger strike
for the past two days. Arman Vardanyan, chairman of the Union of Young
Politicians of Armenia, said recent remarks made by Ter-Petrosyan, 66,
might indicate he was considering stepping down as ANC leader. But
finding a replacement of similar standing would be difficult.

“Ter-Petrosyan
was making it plain he didn’t intend to stand in the next [2013]
presidential election. But in my opinion, no newcomer is going to be
able to present a serious challenge to the current president, Serzh
Sargsyan,” Vardanyan said.

He predicted that the ANC would win
around 25 per cent of the seats in parliament in the May 2012 election,
while the Heritage Party and Dashnakutsyun, a party now in opposition
but formerly part of the ruling coalition, would probably struggle to
surpass the five per cent threshold needed to gain any seats at all. The
result, Vardanyan said, would be that the ruling coalition would
maintain its grip on power, and there would be little progress towards a
more democratic system.

Keryan
ascribes Armenia’s failure to build a more open political system in the
two decades since independence to economic problems, the Karabakh war
and its legacy of isolation in the region, and the continuing influence
of Russia. “For 20 years, Armenia has seen its security as depending on
its strategic partnership with Russia,” he said. “This could change only
if there were major geopolitical changes in the region, and those
changes haven’t happened.”

Last
year, the two countries agreed to extend the stay of Russian troops in
Armenia. An official strategy paper on national security reaffirms that a
continued Russian presence in the South Caucasus is crucial for
Armenia. While the document also talks about greater cooperation with
NATO members, most analysts say the authorities would never stray too
far from Moscow.

Meanwhile,
a rapprochement with Turkey which has emerged over recent years appears
to have ground to a halt. With no change to the external environment,
observers say there is little impetus to move away from the current
system dominated by a small political elite and by oligarchs with vested
economic interests. “There is a privileged caste which is not only able
to bypass the law but which uses the state to pursue its own ends,”
Arman Rustamyan, a member of parliament from the opposition
Dashnakutsyun party, said.

Hovsep
Khurshudyan, an expert from the Armenian Centre for National and
International Studies, said that despite the government’s declared
intention of pursuing reforms, “the economy remains in the hands of a
few families which also have political influence”. “The government is
unable to force the big oligarchs to pay taxes, so it’s forced to place
the whole tax burden on small and medium-sized businesses and on
ordinary citizens, who will soon refuse to put up with this, or will
emigrate,” Khurshudyan added.

Vazgen
Manoukyan, who heads of the Public Council, a government advisory body
set up by President Sargsyan in 2009, told IWPR that while Armenia had a
democratic constitution, there were problems in practice with
elections, freedom of speech and the judicial system. “The parliamentary
and presidential elections of 1990 and 1991 were democratic, but 1995
and 1996 saw a huge step backwards, and the tradition of electoral fraud
has continued since then, albeit with some modification,” he said.

Manoukyan
said free speech was marred by the removal of the A1+ TV channel from
the airwaves some years ago, the judicial system was far from perfect,
and economic domination by the oligarchs had curbed both market
competition and the growth of democratic institutions.

Democracy Derailed: How Armenia Has Become the Post-Soviet Region's Model Dictatorship

On December 7, 2015, Armenia held a landmark referendum on constitutional reform. The results were resounding. Over 63% of Armenians voted in favor of reforms
that would greatly increase the power wielded by the Prime Minister and
render the president's role in the Armenian political process
ceremonial. Even though decreased presidential power in CIS
countries is typically associated with democratic consolidation, liberal
Armenians expressed severe discontent with the referendum's outcome.
Opposition MPs in Armenia and European politicians accused regime
officials of electoral fraud and criticized the lack of meaningful open
political debate on constitutional reform prior to holding the vote. Four thousand Armenians protested
the government's handling of the referendum in the streets of Yerevan
immediately after the results were announced, confirming the predictions
of Armenia experts that the regime would be destabilized yet again by
mass unrest.

Despite these protests and the fierce rhetoric
emanating from established opposition groups in Armenia, it is
intriguing that the current wave of demonstrations have not escalated to
the levels witnessed in the summer 2015 Electric Yerevan protests. This
failure is a testament to the success of Serzh Sargsyan regime's
authoritarian consolidation efforts. Even though the July protests were
largely motivated by popular discontent with Armenia's relationship with Russia,
Sargsyan successfully deflected these concerns to benefit of his regime
security. The Armenian regime has effectively addressed the domestic
undercurrents of the protests while simultaneously exploiting crises in
Turkey and Nagorno-Karabakh to receive more extensive support from the
Kremlin.

Why Sargsyan's Response to Electric Yerevan was Effective

Even
though Armenia has a long tradition of popular protests forged from the
transition experience and the instabilities associated with
authoritarian consolidation in the post-1991 period, the summer 2015
protests in Yerevan posed a distinct challenge to Sargsyan's regime
security. Unrest occurred outside the context of an election cycle and
the extensive participation of previously apolitical youth and urban
professionals in the protests highlighted the extent to which civil society in Armenia had matured in recent years. The anti-Russian undercurrents of the Electric Yerevan movement fueled many comparisons with the Euro-Maidan revolution
in Ukraine, especially amongst Russian observers. At points, Sargsyan's
long-term future appeared uncertain, with chorus of premature political
obituaries drumming louder as unrest worsened day-by-day.

Sargsyan
effectively defied these naysayers by demonstrating that he had learnt
the lessons from Viktor Yanukovych's ignominious demise in Ukraine.
Instead of resorting to mass violence to restore order, Sargsyan
attempted to appease the protesters with concessions demonstrating his ostensible concern for their economic plight and demands for a less corrupt judicial process.

Six days after the protests began, Sargsyan made a public statement insisting that the 17% hike in electricity costs
was necessary to ensure Armenia's power grid was operational. But to
alleviate the financial burden, he announced that the government not
households would cover the excess costs until an independent audit of
the price hike was completed. To prevent opposition movements from
snowballing in retaliation to gratuitous police brutality, Sargsyan
launched a police investigation into officers involved in the June 23 crackdown.
A senior regime-affiliated member of the police force was demoted and
police officers involved in the repression were reprimanded.

Sargasyan's
deft accommodation of the Yerevan protesters' grievances prevented the
electricity protests from escalating into a national popular revolution.
The absence of unified leadership
amongst the Armenian opposition and the increasingly abstract nature of
their agenda following the government's concession on the electricity
issue ultimately defused the protests completely. To prevent a
more cohesive challenge to the Republican Party's 16 year long hegemony
over Armenian politics from emerging, Sargasyan has attempted to
stimulate the economy by borrowing from international lenders
and by presenting Armenia as an economic bridge between China and
Europe. He also launched an ambitious constitutional reform agenda
weakening presidential power to present a more credible façade of
democracy to the international community, while providing a gateway to a
potential run for a third presidential term.

When opposition
movements resisted these measures by claiming that Republican Party was
trying to institutionalize a one-party system in Armenia, Sargsyan
devised a divide-and-conquer strategy to marginalize the opposition
and exploit its disunity. Amidst allegations of bribery and by courting
Russian assistance, the Prosperous Armenia bloc supported the regime's
proposed reforms, dissolving the opposition troika formed several months earlier. As
a result, opposition blocs like the Heritage Party who opposed the
Sargsyan reforms became increasingly hostile towards those who
acquiesced and experienced defections amongst their own ranks. The
regime's clever political machinations ensured that the December 7
referendum was met with much more muted opposition than one would have
expected on the heels of Electric Yerevan.

Armenia and Russia: A Tightening Partnership

The
second prong of Sargsyan's authoritarian consolidation strategy is a
counter-intuitive one: deepening Armenia's partnership with Russia. The
Electric Yerevan protests highlighted Russia's eroding soft power in
Armenia and diminished popular support for integration with Putin's
Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) during a period of economic recession.
Sargsyan's channeling of public anger away from Russia and towards
Armenian domestic policy by appearing to crack down on government
mismanagement and police brutality was a risky move. But in the long
run, it has crystallized Russia's support for Armenia, at a time when Azerbaijan has been attempting to thaw relations with the Kremlin.

Russia's
increased support for Armenia once again upholds its reputation as the
leading guardian of authoritarianism in the CIS region. The head of the
Federation Council's Foreign Relations Committee Konstantin Kosachev described
the summer 2015 protests in Armenia as bearing "all the hallmarks of a
colored revolution." Elites close to Kremlin insinuated that Western-backed NGOs had a hand in fomenting instability in Yerevan. Sargasyan's
new found sense of vulnerability implored Russia to tighten its
alliance with Armenia. In late October, the Russian government proposed
the creation of a joint air defense mechanism with Armenia as part of a
broader plan to create a CSTO aerial umbrella extending to Central Asia. Armenia also received a $200 million loan
from Russia, which would be used to purchase long-range weapons and
military hardware vital for the modernization of its military.

The
sale of arms at discounted prices during a period of economic crisis in
Russia and a brewing debt crisis in Armenia is a telling sign of
Putin's commitment to preserving the bilateral relationship. It also
repaired the strains created by the January slaying of an Armenian family
by a Russian soldier, an event that caused Regional Studies Center
director Richard Giragosian to speculate that an end to Armenia's
security dependence on Russia was near. In addition to stoking
fears of uncontrolled popular revolutions that could diffuse to Russia,
Armenia has curried Russian patronage by exploiting regional crises. The
recent inflammation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been at least
partially attributed to Armenian provocation. Azerbaijan's defense
ministry on October 1 accused Armenia of violating the ceasefire 80 times a day by using heavy machine guns and mortar shells.

In
tandem with these escalations, Russia has become increasingly
confrontational in its rhetoric about the Karabakh conflict. Russian
ambassador to the OSCE Aleksandr Lukashevich
recently described Turkey's unconditional support for Azerbaijan as
detrimental to long-term prospects of peace and an infringement on OSCE
responsibilities. The economic aid and coercive capabilities the
Armenian regime has received from Russia depend in part on Armenia
facing credible security threats. Creating an atmosphere of perpetual
crisis in the South Caucasus therefore plays right into Sargsyan's
hands.

Armenia's scathing condemnation
of Turkey's recent downing of a Russian jet over its airspace, and
solidarity with Russia's counter-terrorism campaign has also
strengthened the Sargasyan regime's ties to Russia. Sergei Mironov, the
chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, submitted a bill
on "holding to account" deniers of the 1915 Armenian genocide. The prospect of a major Russian military buildup on the Turkey-Armenia border has also become more realistic.

Yet
unlike Yanukovych who made integration with Russia or the acceptance of
the EU association agreement a mutually exclusive choice, Armenia has
been able to balance increased Russian support with a multi-vector
foreign economic policy. Armenia has actively co-opted Chinese
investment, received 30 million euros from the EU
to improve fiscal governance, and has reopened negotiations on a
broad-based bilateral framework agreement with Europe. Sargsyan's
successful free-riding off regional crises has given him flexibility and
leverage that Ukraine's elites lacked in 2013, and has put Putin in a
position in which escalating support for the Armenian regime is the only
way for Russia to maintain its leverage in the South Caucasus.

Sargasyan's
mixture of shrewd concessions, deflection of blame away from Russia to
domestic institutions and exploitation of international crises to curry
Russian support demonstrates that he has learnt the lessons of Maidan.
His successful experience could also provide a powerful role model for
other authoritarian Russian allies like Belarus or Kazakhstan, in
combatting future mass protests and neutralize the effects of liberal
civil society development.

All progressive humanity’ is concerned by the periodic reports about
the disappearance of this or that type of plant or animal, [but] we are
much less concerned about the disappearance of nations and
nationalities,” Armenian expert Gevork Pogosyan says. Yet, as the
post-Soviet period demonstrates, that can happen even to larger nations
that have lost population numbers as a result of declining birthrates
and increasing outmigration and assimilation (see EDM,
December 11). One such country now facing a demographic collapse is
Armenia, whose population has dropped by nearly 1.5 million since 1991
and is projected to decline by that much again over the next several
decades (Kavkazoved.info, December 6).

Such declines call into question the long-term survival of Armenians
as a nation, the director of the Yerevan Institute of Philosophy,
Sociology and Law suggests. But more immediately, they have significant
security implications given that those leaving Armenia are the most
educated portion of the population rather than the working class. And
furthermore, Armenia remains locked in a conflict with its neighbor,
Azerbaijan, over Karabakh and the other Armenian-occupied territories of
Azerbaijan. But like the other Muslim republics of the former Soviet
space, Azerbaijan is experiencing rapid population growth and is
predicted to continue to do so for some time to come.

Between 1920 and 1991, Pogosyan says, Armenia’s population rose from
880,000 to approximately five million; but after 1991, it began to lose
population and will continue to do so. In part, this reflects the
decline in the birthrate by 50 percent over that period; but to a
greater extent, it is the product of outmigration, something many
Armenians thought might be temporary but which is proving to be
permanent. “Hundreds of thousands have left, but only a handful have
returned,” Pogosyan notes. And because it is the young who are leaving
most often, the number of women in prime childbearing age groups is
falling, which will push the population down even more, perhaps to only
1.5 million by mid-century. Moreover, that population will be far
“grayer” than the current one.

Some of this reflects the real absence of opportunities in Armenia,
the Yerevan scholar argues. But part of it signifies a spiritual crisis
in which Armenians increasingly feel that they and their children have
no future in a country that is locked in what appears to be a permanent,
if undeclared, war and whose government has done little to fight
domestic corruption or crime. The authorities, meanwhile, have often
reacted with indifference to this trend or even welcomed it: One former
prime minister said that if Armenians were not leaving the country in
massive numbers, there would be a revolt at home.

If the problem is to be addressed, Pogosyan says, the government must
first admit that the problem exists, something it has not been willing
to do; and it must then adopt policies intended to change the existing
national psychology. At the same time, it must recognize that some of
the things it is doing to save the Armenian economy may be destroying
the country’s demographic future. Entering the Eurasian Economic Union,
for example, will make it even easier for Armenians to leave their
country and never return. It is already the case, he says, that there
are almost as many ethnic Armenians in Russia as there are in Armenia.

Moreover, he continues, it is not just a question of gross numbers.
If many international guest workers from Muslim republics are
low-skilled people, between 55 and 60 percent of Armenians leaving to
work elsewhere are highly trained professionals. That further depresses
the future of Armenia. And this trend gives no sign of easing. According
to research his institute has done, Pogosyan says, “up to 40 percent of
young people are set on leaving the country, either to study, for to
work, or to live there and marry. This is a very bad symptom.”

Yerevan cannot hope to stop outmigration, Pogosyan asserts, but what
it must do if the nation is to have a future is to promote “circular
migration,” in which Armenians go abroad for part of their lives and
then return to Armenia. That is the pattern in Europe, and Yerevan must
take steps to make it the pattern in Armenia as well. At the same time,
it must do more to attract Armenians from the eight-million-strong
Armenian diaspora. To date, however, Yerevan has not been doing that.
For example, he says, it has taken in only 7,000 Armenians from Syria
out of an Armenian community there of 150,000.

But the situation is even worse than those figures suggest, Pogosyan
states, because many of the Syrian Armenians who have come to Armenia
are using it as a way station until they can move to Europe or the
United States. He says he has a neighbor from Syria, a doctor with his
own clinic in Armenia. But now that neighbor is selling his clinic and
apartment and planning to move to France. He and his family “lived in
Armenia only a year, and you already cannot keep him” there. “That is
the reality” of Armenian life now; as a result, the scholar says,
“depopulation continues.”

Moscow has taken control of Armenia’s economy and restricted its
domestic and foreign policy options to the point that one Yerevan
commentator says it has “de facto” occupied that south Caucasus country,
a possible indication of just what Vladimir Putin may hope to do in
other post-Soviet states if he has the chance. Ruben Mergrabyan, the editor of the Russian Service of the 1in.am internet portal, says
that Moscow has moved to establish its control over Armenia by
“cleverly playing” on the Karabakh issue and by exploiting Armenia’s
dependence on energy supplies from abroad.

The first, he says, helps the Russian government to silence any
objections to what it is doing inside Armenia while the second excludes
from his country all foreign firms and especially energy suppliers like
neighboring Iran that might allow Yerevan to take a more balanced
approach. Moscow used both the fear of Azerbaijani attacks and of the loss of
energy supplies to force Yerevan to join the Eurasian Economic Union
when in Mehrabyan’s words, the Russian side “made a proposal that
[Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan] could not refuse.”

What has occurred in Armenia is something “unnatural,” the Armenian
commentator continues. It is next to Iran, a major exporter of gas, but
it imports its gas from Siberia, as the result of agreements that do
little more than “legalize [Armenia’s] occupation.” Indeed, under the
terms of those accords, Yerevan can’t make a deal with Tehran unless
Moscow agrees. Russia’s goal, he says, “is to liquidate any chance for Armenia to
establish economic ties with Iran.” Without such ties, Armenia must seek
to go through one of its three other neighbors, with one of which
(Azerbaijan) it is at war, with a second (Turkey) longstanding
hostility, and with the third (Georgia) it has difficulties precisely
because of Yerevan’s Russian orientation.

Moscow has then used this situation to take control of Armenia’s
domestic energy infrastructure, acquiring ownership in “property for
debt” swaps that Yerevan has little choice but to accept, given that its
own economy is in a shambles. But Russian control imposes new and heavy
costs. Mehrabyan says that in Armenia “Russian government companies now are
involved in activities which resemble the methods of organized criminal
groups” bringing with them the illegalities characteristic of their
branches in Russia itself, including massive corruption and direct
involvement in Armenian politics on behalf of Moscow.

At the same time, Moscow has done everything it can to “undermine the work of the OSCE
Minsk Group,” claiming it supports a resolution but in fact providing
offensive arms to Azerbaijan and looking the other way when Baku
officials make statements suggesting they are about to launch an attack
on Armenian-controlled portions of Azerbaijan. That has allowed Moscow to issue statements suggesting that it alone
“can defend Armenia” not only from Azerbaijan but also “from its
historic enemy.” All this, Mehrabyan says, has left Armenia “a hostage
of the imperial policy of Russia,” one whose dimensions are obscured by
massive Kremlin-backed propaganda about a possible war with Azerbaijan.

Now it appears Moscow is about to take the next step in this
neo-imperialist game, inserting its own “pocket” candidate for president
of Armenia, Ara Abramyan, the chairman of the Union of Armenians of
Russia, who recently returned to Yerevan to signal his political plans. Mehrabyan says that Abramyan’s involvement in Armenian politics not
only threatens to turn Armenia into something Russia can trade but also
represents “the final degradation of the [Armenian] political system.”
Indeed, the commentator says, for Vladimir Putin, Abramyan is “the
Armenian Yanukovych.” One can only hope that that Russian project in Armenia will suffer
the same fate the analogous Russian project met in Ukraine. But if
Mehrabyan is correct, the chances of that unless there are serious
changes in Yerevan’s relations with its own people and the outside world
are significantly less.

Nagorno-Karabakh remains a “partly free” territory governed by a less
repressive administration than Azerbaijan, the U.S. human rights group
Freedom House said in an annual survey released this week. Freedom House evaluated “political rights” and “civil liberties” in
195 countries and 15 territories, including Karabakh, on a 7-point
scale, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free. It again
rated both Karabakh and Armenia “partly free” and kept Azerbaijan in the
“not free” category of nations surveyed. What is more, the “Freedom in the World 2016” survey further
downgraded Azerbaijan’s ratings, giving the authorities in Baku a median
score of 6.5.

“Azerbaijan’s political rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to an
intensified crackdown on dissent, widespread irregularities surrounding
the November parliamentary elections, and serious violations of the
right to a fair trial in cases against journalists, opposition
activists, and human rights defenders,” it explained. “President Ilham Aliyev’s government used the polls to show its teeth
to the democratic world, barring several foreign journalists from
covering the process and imposing restrictions on international observer
groups that led some to suspend their monitoring missions,” adds the
report.

By
comparison, Karabakh’s political rights and civil liberties ratings
remained unchanged at 5. Freedom House upgraded the status of the
Armenian-populated
unrecognized republic, which broke away from Azerbaijani rule in the
early 1990s, from “not free” to “partly free” in 2013. The watchdog
attributed that to Karabakh’s “competitive” July 2012 presidential
election which it said featured a “genuine opposition.”

The Azerbaijani government on Thursday condemned the U.S. watchdog’s
latest evaluations of Azerbaijan and especially Karabakh. “Setting aside
the separatist regime created in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan
in the latest annual report is yet another instance of bias shown by
Freedom House,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev said,
according to the APA news agency. Hajiyev said that previous reports also exposed “Freedom House’s
biased attitude towards Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and
sovereignty.”

Like other Western human rights groups, Freedom House has repeatedly
decried the arrests and imprisonment of dozens of Aliyev critics in
recent years. In 2014, it urged the United States and the European Union
to consider imposing sanctions on Azerbaijani officials involved in
human rights abuses.

One of my
American colleagues who lives in Boston and always keeps in touch with the
local Armenians, last year visited Armenia as a volunteer firmly intending to
assist in fixing some social problems in Armenia. After working for more than a
month in Armenia we finally met just before his departure to the USA. He was
sad and perplexed. “I know many Armenians living in Boston, New York and New
Jersey,” he said, “they are very successful in their respective fields and live
safe and prosperous lives. Many of them emigrated from Armenia during the last
15–20 years; and I treat the Armenians with
admiration.

Now, when I have visited various towns and villages in Armenia,
met people, listened to them about their and the country's problems, I'm just
stunned. How is it possible that a country with such a talented and
hard-working people, and such a diverse diaspora that sends billions of dollars
to Armenia every year, can remain so underdeveloped and poor?”

Indeed,
Armenia was well-known in the Soviet Union for its highly skilled
population, its industrial, scientific and educational potential, and its
healthcare. Now Armenia has become one of the poorest countries in the world.
The average monthly salary in Armenia is $370 (USD), the average monthly
pension is $90, and 20% of children under five years old have health problems
caused by undernourishment. The economy is suffering under the yoke of the
local oligarchs and Russian monopolies. The authorities have signed many
disgraceful agreements with Russia, which force Armenians to buy gas and oil
exclusively from Russia at the highest price possible, when oil and gas prices have
fallen elsewhere in the world.

There is no
serious local or foreign investment in Armenia not only because of the unfavourable
economic conditions (some patriotic Armenians from the diaspora are ready to
make substantial investments even in these conditions), but also because of the
unwritten laws of systemic corruption. Every investor planning a significant
project in the country is obliged to donate a substantial portion of its
investment to the current president's family in order to be able to operate
without obstruction. For example, the current president’s
brother, Sashik Sargsyan, is known in Armenia as Mr. “50%.”

The systemic injustices
and illegalities in Armenia, as well as the alienation of ordinary citizens
from their own country's government, have led to widespread apathy and despair.
People, who could develop Armenia, are leaving the country for Russia, Europe,
USA, Ukraine, Canada and Australia. The current emigration rate of 4–5% of the
whole population annually is the highest in the world and is simply disastrous.
During the 25 years of Armenia's independence, more than 2 million people left
the country, almost the same number of people who remain there today. Moreover,
half of those emigrants left Armenia in the last 8 years, during Serzh Sargsyan’s
presidency.

The
government, through sophisticated and unlawful practices, has left the country’s
citizens bare-handed in face of a mighty criminal gang that has seized power in
Armenia. The people cannot affect this situation in any way and their participation
in the elections serves as a smokescreen for the ruling clan to demonstrate
formal conformity with the democratic standards imposed in Armenia by the West
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is difficult to find another country
in the world, where the ruling party has so many members with mafia-style
nicknames

On February
2013 the West turned a blind eye to the reproduction of Serzh Sargsyan’s power
through massive electoral fraud, as Sargsyan had promised to sign the
Association Agreement with the EU. But the previous four years of
successful negotiation process with the EU was not a classic episode of the Eastern
Partnership but rather a vivid example of eastern cunning aimed at getting
support from the West during upcoming presidential elections.

The post-election
protest campaign, organized by Raffi K. Hovannisian, who was actually elected
as a president by absolute majority, was denied any political support from the
West and gradually faded away. Just four months after the demise of this
powerful anti-governmental movement, Serzh Sargsyan not only refused to sign
the Association Agreement with the EU, but during his meeting with Putin in the
Kremlin made a solemn pledge to integrate Armenia into the Russia-led Eurasian
Economic Union (EEU).

It is noteworthy that Raffi Hovannisian’s
"Heritage" party was the only one, whose faction in the Parliament
voted against Armenia's integration to the EEU. As a result the authorities
worked incessantly to exacerbate the rivalries within the party and its
parliamentary faction and eventually to eviscerate it. Now the parliamentary
faction of the "Heritage" party essentially has only one member
instead of its previous five. Today the authorities promote puppet
“pro-western” parties, which are fully under its control.

On December
6, 2015, Serzh Sargsyan called a referendum on constitutional
"reforms" and laid the groundwork to reinforce and perpetuate his
power in a weakened Armenia. Currently in his second and final term as
President, these changes are designed to enable him to retain power as Prime
Minister or Speaker of the Parliament. No wonder that the results of the
referendum were rigged. Thanks to the opposition and civil society efforts, the
law enforcement authorities have had to file dozens of criminal cases on
numerous electoral frauds during the referendum.

None of these criminal
proceedings have been initiated as a result of the intervention by the Police
or National Security Service. And this all happened despite the fact that the
opposition parties are not funded from any sources, except the annual state
financial subsidy of a mere 7–10 thousand dollars, which is provided by law (other
sources of opposition financing, such as financial backing from business
sector, are strictly forbidden, and carry penalties for the sponsors that
can lead to their bankruptcy: we have such examples).

But even the court cases
of the criminals who rigged the results of the referendum bring no results as
they are released one-by-one after simply paying small fines; in fact the
maximum punishment for such an offense as state capture in Armenia is a fine of
$ 1000. And even if some will be imprisoned, certainly very soon they will be
released under amnesty, granted by their main customer, the president, as has
happened during the last years of independent Armenia.

Thus, in
Armenia catching criminals and handing them over to be tried and punished is
the direct responsibility of the opposition and civil society, while the
absolute right of the authorities is to release those criminals, who will continue
to falsify elections, capture the state, plunder the state budget, and simply sending
to prison those who actively resist these electoral crimes. There are 13
political prisoners in Armenia today. This fact has been unanimously accepted
not only by the opposition and human rights organizations, but also in Eastern
Partnership Civil Society Forum, which has urged Armenia’s authorities to
release them many times.

The reaction
of the West to the rigged referendum last December compared to the 2013
presidential election was tougher. The West, through the US Ambassador
and the Head of EU Delegation to Armenia have demanded the punishment all the
criminals, who committed electoral fraud, and prepare an electoral code with
the involvement of civil society and the opposition, and thus take steps
to restore public trust towards the electoral system.

But these statements have
made little difference. Recently the Government of Armenia received a “yellow
card”: on March 18, a few days after the publication of authorities’
anti-democratic draft of the Electoral Code, "Moody's" downgraded
Armenia's long-term issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings from Ba3 to B1. But the
debate on the Electoral Code in Armenia shows that, even with pressure from the
West the authorities will not be pushed to accept any real reform of the
Electoral Code for one simple reason - election laws, which guarantee free and
legitimate elections, will be the end of their power.

And any government elected
by the people will uncover a long series of the economic and criminal offences,
such as the mass shooting at the Parliament in 1999, the murder of 10 peaceful
demonstrators in 2008, the falsification of at least 5 presidential elections,
the extradition of a huge section of Armenia's economy to Russia for a low,
sometimes symbolic, price, and the continual looting of the state treasury.

But if until
recently Armenia’s democratic society has had no hope of a regime change in the
country, now, in the light of economic and geopolitical weakening of the Serzh Sargsyan's
main sponsor Kremlin, such hopes are beginning to revive. The opposition,
supported by the civil society, will try to change the government for the first
time in the history of Armenia and to establish a democratic regime. In this
regard, the situation has a number of similarities with that of Ukraine, and
the current president of Armenia resembles President Yanukovych, the former
ruler of Ukraine. Serzh Sargsyan enjoys the support of only 7–8% of the population
and is widely mistrusted by the general public.

The Yanukovych precedent is
instructive, particularly since many people in Armenia have been excited about
the popular revolution in Maidan, as they were in 2011 about the Arab Spring. In
Armenia the more or less positive attitude towards Russia that has existed for
20 years is taking some sharp turns. The only factor that still keeps Armenia
in Kremlin's orbit is the Turkish-Azerbaijani threat, expressed, on one hand,
through the ongoing illegal blockade of Armenia by Turkey as well as the
refusal by Ankara to ratify the Armenian-Turkish protocols, signed under the
auspices of the USA, EU and Russia.

On the other hand, there are the statements
by the leadership of Azerbaijan about the possibility of conquering the
self-determined Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (the last one, by
the way, according to the Freedom House index “Freedom in the world”, has much more democratic political system
and more liberal economy than Azerbaijan). But even
these factors will be unlikely to hold back the people when the last drop will
overflow their cup of patience. "It is
enough to establish legitimate government in Armenia based on the people’s
choice, and I am sure, that Armenia will blossom in a short time," said my
American friend before leaving. Armenians
hope that this day is not so far.

Armenia
has been placed first in a ranking of countries with highest rate of
deaths caused by cancer. The list has been compiled by the World Life
Expectancy research center. Zimbabwe and Hungary are ranked second and
third respectively. According to the study, the death rate in Armenia
is 229.84 per 100 thousand people. Armenia’s partners in the Eurasian
Economic Union are ranked as follows: Kazakhstan – 14th, Russia – 15th,
Belarus – 56th, Kyrgyzstan – 99th. Neighboring Georgia is placed 85th,
Azerbaijan is 72nd, Turkey is 40th and Iran is 113th. The research
shows that the deaths caused by cancer are in no way related to the
level of development of the country or the weather conditions. The
United States is ranked 43rd in the list, while France and Germany are
placed 22nd and 41st.

In
Armenia’s post-independence period, debt-for-asset swaps, many of which
were negotiated personally by now-President Serzh Sargsyan, turned over
critical assets to Russian SOEs in exchange for debt relief. Many top
Armenian government officials, not to mention the Armenian public, were
left in the dark as these backroom deals were executed. Since,
Russian companies have used various tactics, including debt-for-asset
swaps, or the offer of discounts on natural gas prices, to gain economic
concessions. As recently as August, Armenia was reportedly mulling the
sale of the Yerevan Power Plant to Gazprom (indebted to the company for
$52.3 million).

Breaking
it down sector by sector, the level of control by Russian state-owned
companies is staggering. The country’s energy sector, in particular, is
inordinately dependent on Russian state owned, or state linked,
enterprises. These companies own or operate an array of power
generating assets and chemical plants in the country. Those such assets
that remain in Armenian government hands, like the Metsamor nuclear
power plant, often still depend entirely on Russian fuel. Many of
Armenia’s thermal power plants, for example, are powered with natural
gas, the majority (80%) of which comes from Russia and passes through a
distribution system fully controlled by Gazprom (via Gazprom Armenia).
While the country’s sources of oil imports are more diversified, all oil
products are moved via the country’s railway system, which is managed
and operated Russian Railways. This Russian economic dominance extends
to other of Armenia’s strategic sectors, including mining, banking and
telecommunications.

Even
in the more traditional soft power realm, Russia holds significant sway
over the Armenian public. Roughly 49% rely on Russian television as
their daily news source, and just 16% of Armenians watch no Russian
television news at all. Outside
of Armenia proper is a diaspora community of roughly 2.3 million, the
majority of which resides in Russia. Keeping in mind that Armenia
itself is home to just 2.9 million - one-third of whom live in poverty -
the country’s inordinate dependence on remittances is blatant. Between
2010 and 2014, remittances constituted roughly 19% of Armenia’s total
GDP, and those originating from Russia comprise some 70% of the total.

The
question of how exactly this economic dominance translates into
political control is not easy to answer, but it starts with the presence
of oligarchs friendly to Moscow, who themselves control certain of the
country’s most lucrative businesses. Made up of a circle of roughly
forty individuals, included amongst the country’s oligarchs are members
of the major political parties and Armenian presidents. The deals
struck with Russian companies operating in the country serve often to
enrich the oligarchs who facilitate the deals or partner with these
firms. Thus, Moscow is often able to force Yerevan to make political or
economic decisions that fall in line with Moscow’s broader agenda (for
example the country’s joining of the Eurasian Economic Union).

There
is no clearer recent example of Moscow’s close ties to the Armenian
oligarchic class than that of newly appointed Prime Minister Karen
Karapetyan, who led Gazprom Armenia for some time and was later Vice
President of Gazprombank. Even if Karapetyan’s appointment is simply a
placeholder until the April 2017 elections, it speaks volumes
symbolically. The Prime Minister’s brother, Samvel Karapetyan, heads
Tashir Group, which purchased Armenian Electric Networks, which controls
the country’s power grid, from Russia’s Inter RAO following the
Electric Yerevan protests.

Due
in large part to these strong economic ties, Armenia is, in effect,
trapped in Moscow’s strategic orbit, despite growing public frustration
with Russia. Moscow’s continued defense sales to Azerbaijan continue to
be a thorn in the side of Armenia, though the government has found
itself able to do little about it. Likewise, Western assistance
dedicated to enhancing the country’s democratic institutions, including
the recently publicized effort to provide financial support for a new
voting process, will not be enough to counter Moscow’s interest in
maintaining the status quo. Without accounting for the economic role of
Russia in Armenia, any efforts to enhance the country’s democratic
institutions will largely fall flat.

Two days before Christmas, as American policymakers were settling into the holidays, Russia quietly signed a sweeping air defense agreement with Armenia,
accelerating a growing Russian military buildup that has unfolded
largely under the radar. It was the most tangible sign yet that Putin is
creating a new satellite state on NATO’s border and threatening an
indispensable U.S. ally. The buildup in Armenia has been glossed
over in Washington, despite being a key piece of Vladimir Putin’s plan
to dominate the region — along with its proxy Syria and growing military
ties with Iran. Most importantly, Armenia shares an approximately 165 mile border with Turkey, a NATO member and the alliance’s southern flank. Over the last six months — as Russia’s
war in Syria and pressure on Turkey has intensified — the flow of its
arms and personnel into Armenia has escalated to include advanced Navodchik-2 and Takhion UAV drone aircrafts, Mi-24 helicopter gunships and Iskander-M ballistic missiles. Last July, Putin ordered snap combat readiness checks in Armenia to test the ability of his forces to react to threats to Russia’s interests abroad. Earlier this month
on orders of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Russia began a
massive military exercise in its “southwestern strategic direction,”
which includes Armenia. The total strength of the regional operation
included approximately 8,500 troops, 900 ground artillery pieces, 200 warplanes and 50 warships. The growing Russian military presence in
Armenia is but the latest indicator of a worrisome trend: Putin’s threat
to NATO and America’s interests in Europe.

The Armenian-Russian alliance is gaining strength

The Armenian-Russian alliance is gaining strength. Armenia currently hosts an estimated 5,000 Russian military personnel and two Russian bases. In 2010, both countries signed an agreement that extended Russia’s basing rights in Armenia by 24 years, until 2044,
and committed Moscow to supply the Armenian armed forces with “modern
and compatible weaponry and special military hardware,” according to
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. The 102nd Military
Base in Gyumri, Armenia — nearly 120 kilometers from the capital (and
less than 10 kilometers from the Turkish border) — has become a crucial
Russian beachhead. A similar Russian deployment on the
borders of any other NATO member state would produce an outcry of
outrage. Why are we staying silent in the face of this thinly veiled
aggression against Turkey? And why are we not speaking up against
Armenia for rolling out the red carpet for Putin’s shock troops? Turkey, after all, is a critical ally in
the global fight against ISIS and is among the only members of the
U.S.-led coalition with bases near strategic ISIS strongholds. In July 2015,
Turkey and the U.S. finalized an agreement to work cooperatively to
combat Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq, allowing the U.S. to
launch air attacks from the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey against
Islamic State terrorist networks in northern Syria.

In international diplomacy, geography is everything

We ignore this threat at our peril. And
in international diplomacy, geography is everything. Armenia borders
three critical U.S. allies: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Russian
forces currently occupy Georgian territory. Azerbaijan steadfastly
resists intimidation from Moscow and is the linchpin in our efforts to
wean Europe from dependence on Russian energy supplies. Make no mistake: The Russian military
presence in Armenia represents a dagger pointed at the heart of NATO as
the Armenia-Russian alliance strengthens. But while Moscow is rattling
its sabers, Washington remains silent. Last August, The Moscow Times
reported that President Putin told Turkey’s Ambassador to Moscow to
“tell your dictator President he can go to hell along with his ISIS
terrorists and I shall make Syria to nothing but a ‘Big Stalingrad.’”
Histrionics aside, the intent is clear. Russia views Turkey as a hostile
state and it will not back down. The picture that has emerged is
unsettling: Armenia is enabling a bad actor, while Russia is using it to
threaten our vital interests. America’s leaders must negotiate from a
position of strength. Instead, we are acquiescing to Putin’s naked show
of force. The history of the 20th century shows us that this will not end well.

Mr. Ereli is also a former deputy spokesman of the State Department. He was U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain from 2007-2011.

The Russia-Armenia alliance is threatening Turkey, a critical U.S. ally

The
Feb. 21 front-page article “For Turkey, high stakes as troubles
intensify” highlighted a critical development: The growing military
alliance between Russia and Armenia is threatening Turkey, an
indispensable U.S. ally and partner in the fight against the Islamic
State. The announcement that Russia is sending a new set of fighter jets
and combat helicopters to an air base only 25 miles from the Turkish
border is just the latest example of this alliance. The two countries’
economic and military ties run deep, bolstered by economic and security
agreements and two military bases — including one just outside the
Armenian capital. Most significant, Armenia is the only country in the
region that shares a border with Turkey and has Russian troops
permanently stationed. Although Armenia has welcomed thousands of
Russian troops and advanced weaponry, these developments seemed to have
escaped the notice of U.S. officials, who were settling in for the
holidays while Russia and Armenia signed a sweeping air defense
agreement two days before Christmas. It’s time for Washington to assess
who our real allies in the region are. Andrew Bowen, Washington: The
writer is senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest.

The
Caucasus Mountains that run between the Black and Caspian Seas could
soon turn into a nuclear flash point because of dangerous saber-rattling
by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. Armenia has illegally claimed territory in western Azerbaijan, an assertion backed by military offensives against Azerbaijan, including a massacre of 600 citizens in 1992. Sadly now, Armenia may be taking the region to the brink of nuclear war.

Armenia received the Iskander missile system from Russia last autumn, a major provocation meant to send a message to Azerbaijan
and NATO ally Turkey. This is consistent with Moscow’s policy of using
missile deployments in Eurasia and the Middle East to threaten western
interests. The
Iskander short-range ballistic missile system is designed to destroy
small targets at up to 300 miles. This means that Iskander missiles
deployed in eastern Armenia could reach targets all over Azerbaijan, including the capital of Baku. Alarmingly, Iskander missiles are capable of being fitted with nuclear warheads.

As if the presence of the missiles were not a clear enough menace, Mr. Sargsyan
visited the improperly held territories and bragged that his government
possessed a “state-of-the-art, powerful striking force.” He went on to
identify potential targets in Azerbaijan — “the most important
infrastructure” — and followed up with a chilling pronouncement about
his intentions as head of the Armenian military. “If needed, the
commander in chief of the Armenian forces will without batting an eyelid
order volley fire by Iskander,” he said.

This
new round of warmongering is troubling in several respects and raises
tensions in Baku and throughout the region. In addition to unnerving Armenia’s neighbors, Mr. Sargsyan’s
statements raised concerns in Washington, D.C. The Jamestown Foundation
recently held a panel discussion on Capitol Hill to address the danger
posed by Armenia’s
deployment of the Iskander missiles, writing that the new weapons
“threaten European stability, put U.S. allies at risk and potentially
violate the 1988 [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty.”

Mr. Sargsyan’s
inflammatory rhetoric destroys the myth propagated by separatists that
the Armenian-seized Azerbaijani territory is an independent republic.
Rather, the region occupied Azerbaijan and is now a staging area for missiles pointed at the rest of Azerbaijan. It is also clear that Mr. Sargsyan is using the missiles as a political weapon. Armenia’s president is seeking to stir his nationalistic supporters against Azerbaijan to increase voter turnout in elections. He is rejecting bids from more sober leaders in Armenia, including former President Levon Ter-Petrossian, for a plan that would reduce tensions between the two nations.

And then there’s the Russia question. Armenia is the only nation that has received the Iskander system from Russia. Why Armenia? Possibly because “the most important infrastructure” in Azerbaijan
that could be targeted by the missiles includes companies owned and
operated by Western entities, including American ones, that ensure
Europe’s energy security. Natural gas from Azerbaijan
flows by pipeline from the Caspian Sea west through Georgia and into
Turkey and Europe. Should that flow be disrupted by military conflict,
Europe would be at the mercy of Russia for its energy needs.

Another
possibility: Russia might be attempting to rebuild its Soviet-era
footprint in the Lesser Caucuses as it has done in Crimea and is
attempting in Eastern Ukraine. It’s no secret that Russia and Armenia recently established a joint air defense pact. If Mr. Sargsyan’s troubling boasts about his willingness to deploy his new Iskander missile system were the only such noise coming from Armenia,
it would be worrisome enough. But in the past six months, top members
of his administration have made more than a dozen similar statements.

Azerbaijan has more than twice as many people as Armenia
yet its Gross Domestic Product is nearly seven times greater. While
Armenians have watched their leaders diminish their economy, Azerbaijan has prospered. Much like North Korea, military posturing is all Armenia has left. This is a dangerous time for Azerbaijan and the entire region because of Armenia’s
reckless pursuit of offensive weapons and incendiary rhetoric.
Azerbaijanis at home and in the United States have depended on America
as a good friend and strong ally. The world can only hope that that will
continue under the new Trump administration.

•
Lloyd Green is a former staff secretary to the George H.W. Bush
campaign’s Middle East Policy Group in 1988 and served in the Department
of Justice between 1990 and 1992.

If You Love A Country, Set It Free: The Case For Cutting Aid To Armenia

Much ado is made by some members of the U.S. government about what is
in fact an inaccurately perceived partnership with Armenia. However,
the facts belie the rhetoric versus the seemingly blind support given to
Armenia. Just last week, it is important to note that the European Court of
Human Rights declared that Armenia controls the Nagorno-Karabakh
territory of Azerbaijan. The essence of a longer judgment is that
Armenia occupies part of another sovereign nation and has left more than
a million refugees. This is a long understood fact that some in
government seem to gloss over.

In addition, at the recent Riga Summit of the EU’s Eastern
Partnership, the EU confirmed that Armenia remains out of step with
Europe and the United States. Unlike the other two countries from the
South Caucasus, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Armenia remained loyal to its
Russian patron and failed to support the West’s condemnation of Russia’s
annexation of Crimea. Armenia’s actions confirmed its complete
dependence on Russia for its foreign policy. This patron-client
relationship leaves Armenia in a rut and further isolates this small
country.

This unequal relationship, in which Russia serves the sole guarantor
of Armenia’s security and economy, leaves the smaller country no choice
but to blindly follow dictates from Moscow and continue its dependence
on energy supplies from another international pariah — Iran. Because
of the occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh territory of Azerbaijan, the
largest regional oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, runs from Azerbaijan
to Georgia and terminates in Turkey, purposefully bypassing Armenia.
Thus, due to Armenia’s intractability over Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia is
excluded from a lucrative share of Caspian oil to Europe. Instead of
benefitting from the bountiful energy and transportation projects
supported by the European Union, Armenia persists on its “go with Russia
and Iran” policy. In the meantime, Azerbaijan and Georgia are building
for the future with the West.

Armenia even joined the Organization of the Treaty of Collective
Security (OTSC), the anti-EU, NATO, and U.S., Russian-sponsored military
and political alliance. Armenia compromised its sovereignty by allowing
Russian troops to be stationed on its territory, the last of the
former-Soviet Republics to allow such an infringement … even sanctioning
the Russians to patrol its borders and airspace. This agreement was
recently extended to 2044.

Armenia also participates in the Russian-dominated military structure
that provides air defense for the OTSC member states called the
Commonwealth of Independent States United Air Defense System. Armenia
seems to constantly seek expansion of its military ties with Russia,
despite Russia’s growing international isolation. Russian diplomat, A.

Dvinyaninov in 2007 advised the Armenian politicians. “That is the
Armenian approach to Russia’s security is selective, and Russia seems
ready for any eventualities of development of relations with Armenia.”
In the meantime, Armenia provides a bridgehead for Russia’s power
projection not only in the Caucasus, but also in the Near East. Another
aspect of this “close cooperation” is that Russia executes effective
military control in this South Caucasian republic.

Economically, Armenian leadership showed a criminal abrogation of
responsibility in its relations with Russia. Without putting up any
resistance, Armenia’s precious few enterprises were transferred to
Russia’s ownership. The current president, Serzh Sargsyan, was directly
involved in the so-called 2003 Equity-for-Debt deal. Five major assets
traded in the deal include key energy, research and development, and
manufacturing facilities, such as the Metzamor nuclear power plant,
which supplies about 40 percent of its domestic energy. Russia also
controls Armenia’s energy sector and is dominant in its transportation,
banking, and telecommunications.

With Russia strengthening its alliance with Armenia, it's time to cut off foreign aid to Armenia

Just
weeks ago, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan announced that his nation
and Russia will discuss the creation of a joint military-industrial
complex in the city of Gyumri, Armenia. This should raise alarms on the
Capitol Hill and throughout Washington, as this is just the next step in
a Russian military buildup utilizing its vassal Armenia as a proxy and
launching point for operations against NATO. While the group of
congressmen who form the Congressional Armenian Issues Caucus continue
their unflinching, if not brazen, financial and military support to this
South Caucasus nation, it serves as a military outpost for
saber-rattling Russia — Armenia even brands itself as one of Russia's
important military outposts.

In an interview with Izvestia, a
Russian daily, Sargsyan declared that Armenia is consistently building
up its defense capability in the framework of military-technical
cooperation with Russia. Also, he stressed the role of the 102nd Russian
military base located in Armenian territory. And in November 2016,
Armenia joined the anti-aircraft defense system of the Russian
Federation.

The deepening Armenian military alliance with Russia
poses a direct threat to NATO. According to Adam Ereli, former deputy
spokesman at the State Department, speaking to Veterans Today, the
agreement's reinforcement of the Russian troops in this region can
threaten countries of NATO and their Western allies. Ereli noted
specifically, "Over the last six months – as Russia's war in Syria and
pressure on Turkey has intensified – the flow of its arms and personnel
into Armenia has escalated to include advanced Navodchik-2 and Takhion
UAV drone aircrafts, Mi-24 helicopter gunships and Iskander-M ballistic
missiles."

The deployment of Iskander-M missiles significantly
changes the military balance in the region. Iskander-M carries a warhead
of 710–800 kg and has a range of 500 km. In February 2017, the Russians
moved Iskander ballistic missile systems within strike range of
anywhere in Turkey, Israel or Azerbaijan, some of the United States'
closest allies. These developments are in sharp dissonance with the
continued financial support for Armenia approved by Congress and
President Barack Obama's administration. The main lobbying effort on
behalf of Armenia is conducted by the Armenian Caucus. This caucus is
currently co-chaired by Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Rep. Jackie Speier,
D-Calif., Rep. David Trott, R-Mich., and Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif.

The
official mission of the caucus runs counter to U.S. interests, as it
advocates for increased trade and assistance to Armenia,
self-determination for Nagorno Karabakh, and supporting U.S. recognition
of the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian Caucus requested $40 million in
aid for 2016. The Obama administration proposed $18.4 million in
Economic Support Funds for Armenia in 2016. The Obama administration
also approved a continued "parity policy" with Azerbaijan, an American
partner in the strategically-important Caspian region, in terms of
appropriated military aid, with International Military Education and
Training (IMET) assistance set at $600,000 and Foreign Military Finance
(FMF) at $1.7 million. USAID has annually allocated $2,000,000 for the
breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh, the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan under
the military occupation by the Armenian forces.

Adam Ereli
pointed to a very weak, even non-existent, response by the West to the
beefing up of the Russian-Armenian military alliance. Western experts
concur that Russia is preparing a new military alliance with Armenia,
which may serve a launching point to unexpectedly hit at the interests
of the U.S. and NATO in the region.

In light of the strengthening
military alliance of Armenia with Russia, the wisdom of continued
support for Armenia needs to be not questioned, but openly condemned.
Armenian "political" organizations such as the Armenian National
Committee of America and others are, in fact, Russian puppets. They are
completely dedicated to perpetuating within Congress the old and corrupt
idea that relations with Russia are good for Armenia and that is, in
turn, good for the U.S. This, while existing pro-Russia organizations do
all in their power to sideline new Armenian organizations that are
decidedly anti-Russian.

This unwarranted support by the Armenian
national organizations in the U.S. for the anti-Western policies carried
out by the Kremlin and Yerevan should be exposed. The new stage in
Armenian-Russian strategic cooperation represents a military threat to
the Western alliance. Members of the Armenian Caucus should be
reprimanded and financial aid to Armenia must cease, especially when the
post-war American allies in NATO are asked to increase their
contributions in order to beef up Western defense against Russia.

Alexander
Murinson is a senior fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center and Bar Ilan
University. He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London and is the author of "Turkey's Entente
with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the Middle
East and Caucasus."